“Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.” — Matthew 5:11-12

Preface

Standing
in front of me was Father Mikhail Zhakov, a monk with a reddish beard that was
long and rather wild. His uncut hair was tied in a knot. Though with
difficulty, he spoke in English. “Will you tell the truth in your
book?” I doubt I will stand before a stricter face even at the Last
Judgment. Father Mikhail was a living outpost of uncombed, God-centered old
Russia. “It isn’t easy to know the truth,” I answered, “and even
harder to tell it, but I will try to know it and to tell it.” With the
gaze of an icon, he charged me, “Truth, truth, but only truth!”

His words
have come back to me again and again in the months since we met during Easter
week in Petrozavodsk. The pages that follow are my attempt to tell the truth
about the current state of religious life in the Soviet Union.

The
undertaking is, nonetheless, the work of a blind man feeling an elephant. The
Soviet elephant is eleven time zones wide. I have done my best to explore as
much of the elephant as I could, travelling from Russia’s Orthodox north to the
Islamic south, from Catholic Lithuania in the west to a Buddhist datsan near
the Mongolian border in the far east.

Much of
the book is an account of conversations with a wide range of Soviet citizens
whose lives center on their faith. I have also talked with state officials who
still decide many matters affecting religious life. I have watched Soviet
television to see what the religious content was — there has been quite a lot
— and been attentive to the Soviet press.

Belonging
to the Russian Orthodox Church gives me an intimate feeling for religious life
in the Soviet Union, and not only for Orthodoxy. I also have the blessing of
two decades of work in interfaith organizations, especially the International
Fellowship of Reconciliation and the World Council of Churches.

Another
great advantage for such a project is that the Russian elephant has become much
more talkative. When I first started writing about religious life in the USSR
six years ago, the possibility of someone like Gorbachev coming to power hadn’t
entered anyone’s imagination. The words perestroika and glasnost meant
nothing. Except for a few brave dissidents who felt they had little to lose and
perhaps something to gain by candor with strangers from the west, Soviet
citizens discussed the more important subjects only with their most trusted
friends. It was rare to hear Stalin’s name and rarer still to hear anyone
mention the Great Terror. Everyone knew where certain churches, synagogues and
mosques had once stood but no one pointed to those empty spaces. Every family
had its large helping of tragedy but talked only of those losses caused by war,
not purges. Many believed in God but few were willing to say so. Many hated the
political order and its values but kept silence or even said it wasn’t so bad.

Especially
in the past year or two, one commonly hears complete and honest answers,
whether talking to a babushka, a student, a priest or even someone in a
government job. It isn’t only that the answers are honest; the present climate
encourages questions a journalist might once have hesitated to ask out of
compassion for the person being interviewed.

A key
word in many conversations is dukhovnost, a term that should be added to
our growing Russian vocabulary in the west. Dukhovnost has profound
significance for anyone wishing to understand current events in the USSR.
Literally it means “quality of Spirit.” Unfortunately
“spirituality”, its English equivalent, though identical in actual
meaning, is usually understood to mean either the private relationship between
the individual and God or a method of prayer. It has lost its social and
ethical dimension.

Dukhovnost, while also referring to the intimate life of prayer, also
suggests moral capacity, courage, wisdom, mercy, social responsibility, a
readiness to forgive, a way of life centered in love. Used by believers, it
means all that happens in your life when God is the central point of reference.

The word
also has a significant place in the vocabulary of non-believers. For them dukhovnost
means whatever it is that draws one toward a moral life, a life of
integrity and courage. Georgi Arbatov, addressing the Communist Party
Conference in Moscow in June 1988, commented that the first three years of perestroika,
while not resulting in significant economic progress, had created the
“political, spiritual and moral preconditions for economic reform.”[1] In few other countries would the spiritual element of economic
life be stressed, or even mentioned, in political debate. To many Russians,
even those who seem estranged from religious belief, the idea of a
non-spiritual life is incomprehensible.

My children
ask me why I spend so much time in the Soviet Union and why I write so much
about religion. The answer is that I am drawn by the intensity of spiritual
life I encounter among Soviet believers. I have never experienced anything like
it and didn’t dream such communities of prayer existed, east or west. I wanted
to know how it was possible.

I was
more than half afraid the answer was persecution — bad news, if true, as it
would mean the main blessing for religious life is a government hostile to
religion.

It is
true that persecution has done much to purify religion in the Soviet Union,
especially by driving out those who were drawn into the local church or
synagogue by family pressure or peer expectations. Persecution has also graced
the Church with many martyrs. But I have learned that dukhovnost gains
its strength not from enemies but from God. In fact one of the great
discoveries of spiritual life is that one needn’t look to the KGB to find the
adversary.

The enemy
is much closer. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn has written of his conversion while
in the gulag:

It was
granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly
broke under its load, this essential experience: how a human being
becomes evil and how good. . . . Gradually it was disclosed to me that
the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between
classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human
heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it
oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one
small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of hearts, there
remains . . . an unuprooted small corner of evil.[2]

I have
learned from Soviet believers how important it is to love of one’s enemies, and
that it is possible. Though this hard teaching is common to both Judaism and
Christianity, in the west we seem to have put it on some remote upper shelf and
forgotten about it.

In the
Book of Exodus we are instructed, “If you meet your enemy’s ox or his
donkey going astray, you shall bring it back to him. If you see the donkey of
one who hates you lying under a burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with
it.” (23:4-5) In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he wrote, “Bless those
who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. . . . Repay no one evil for
evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If possible, so
far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge
yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God; for it is written, Vengeance is
mine, I will repay, says the Lord. No, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he
is thirsty, give him drink.” (Romans 12:14; 17-20).

Such
biblical love has been widely practiced by many Soviet believers, love not in the
sentimental sense but rather the rejection of revenge and the will to do good
to an adversary, hoping always his conversion. The person “on the
way” — a typical Russian phrase for someone living the life of the Spirit
— realizes that spiritual purification is never a private event but involves
even one’s enemies.[3]

Such love is linked to a readiness to forgive. “I
must forgive,” a Russian Christian told me. “Otherwise I am in hell
and I am not permitted to receive Christ.”

I have
discovered that underneath the political and economic surface of Soviet life is
an intense but largely invisible spiritual life. Believers waiting in line are
often people at prayer. I have also come to realize that the strength of soul
which has empowered people to retain their faith despite so many heavy blows
has much to do with what the Russian Orthodox call bytovoe blagochestie:
the art of ritual living. Nicolas Zernov wrote about this:

“They
way people greeted each other, or expressed their sorrow or joy, the various
kinds of meals they ate at different seasons, the decoration of their houses,
and the architecture of their churches — all these were used [and are still
used] by the Russians as parts of their corporal effort to transform this world
into the temple of the Holy Spirit. The material and the spiritual were treated
as two sides of the same reality, and for this reason the smallest details of
daily life were charged with religious significance.”[4]

Most
believers in the Soviet Union, whatever their nationality and faith, have
preserved their particular variety of the art of ritual living, not only
retaining ancient rituals of worship but maintaining an intense sense of sacred
time and space.

“Why
change the way we pray?” asked a woman in a Moscow church. “Beauty takes
many generations. And why hurry at prayer? All good things take time and are
best done slowly.”

* * *

About the
structure of this book: My last book, Pilgrim to the Russian Church, was
organized as a journal as that seemed the best way to present a gradual process
of discovery. While some elements of a journal are preserved in this volume, I
have chosen a more thematic structure. The first chapter considers the
repressive context in which Soviet believers were living in 1987. The second
chapter is a detailed account of some of the events connected with the
Millennium celebration in 1988. The following chapters are organized under
confessional headings: Orthodox, Old Believers, Catholics, Protestants, Jews,
Moslems and Buddhists. There is a chapter on the Council for Religious Affairs.
The final chapter considers the expected content of the new Soviet law on
freedom of conscience and what is still lacking.

In the
chapters about particular religious traditions, I have let believers speak for
themselves. They do so eagerly now without fear of reprisal.

For all
the voices that are contained in this book, I am painfully aware of those that
are missing. In the section on Soviet Protestants, there are interviews only
with Baptists, Lutherans and Seventh day Adventists, but there are many other
churches as well, including Jehovahs Witnesses, Methodists, Mennonites and
Dukhobors. There appear to be the seeds in Moscow of a Quaker Meeting. In the
Catholic section, I wish that I had had more extensive contact with members of
the Ukrainian Catholic Church and been able to visit the western Ukraine. The
only visa I have sought and not received in the USSR was one to Lvov. I hope
some day to write about this subject at length. In the Jewish section, I regret
the lack of contact with members of the synagogue in Moscow. An appointment I
had made with one of those working there fell through and I had to fly back to
Holland the next day. The miracle of this book is that so many important
meetings happened, but I miss that one, especially as a Jewish Cultural Center,
Museum and Library is opening in Moscow.

“Missing
something gives you good reasons to come back,” as my colleague Sergei put
it when seeing me off.

* * *

Naming a book is sometimes
harder than naming a child. In the end, the U.S. edition is going to press as Religion
in the New Russia, a title that may suggest insensitivity on the author’s
part to the fact that much of the book concerns events occurring within the old
Russian (now Soviet) empire but outside Russia.

While Russia is the largest
Soviet Republic, there are fourteen others: the three Baltic states: Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania; the two republics most closely linked by history and
language to Russia: Byelorussia and the Ukraine; then Moldavia, Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union’s southwest corner; and finally
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kirghizia filling a huge
area in central Asia. Nor does that end the story. Within the borders of the
vast Russian federation are a number of “autonomous” republics, two
of which feature in this book: Karelia and Buryat. Despite all the press
attention being given in recent years to the various Soviet nationalities, it
still comes as a surprise to many to learn that there are a hundred non-Russian
nationalities living in the USSR and to discover that Moslems are the
second-largest Soviet ethnic group, a population presently growing at four
times the rate of the Soviet population as a whole. The fact is that
“Russia” isn’t so Russian.

Yet in the last analysis,
the publisher found none of the proposed alternative titles as engaging as the
one that has ended up on the cover. Just as Holland (two provinces among
twelve) equals the Netherlands for many people, as does Russia equal the Soviet
Union in western headlines. Our apologies to any who are annoyed. Please don’t
judge the book by its title.

* * *

Many of
the same people who helped with Pilgrim to the Russian Church have
assisted with this as well: Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk, head of the
Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, and members of his staff,
especially Tatiana Volgina and Vyacheslav Ovsyannikov; and Georgi
Derevianchenko of the Department of External Church Affairs.

This book
owes much to the staff of Keston College, a British institution founded by an
Anglican priest, Michael Bourdeaux. For many years Keston has studied the
situation of religious believers in countries under Communist rule, publishing
books and pamphlets as well as producing two magazines and a news service, all
the while campaigning for the release of religious prisoners. The staff members
who were most generous in helping me were Jane Ellis, Helen Bell, Suzanne
Oliver and John Anderson.

Among
others outside the USSR who have given advice or helped in other ways I
especially wish to mention Frans Van Agt, former Dutch ambassador to the Soviet
Union; William van den Bercken of the Interuniversity Institute for
Missiological and Ecumenical Research in Utrecht; Peter Jarman of Quaker Peace
and Service; Metropolitan Anthony in London; to Father Matthew Stadniouk,
secretary to Patriarch Pimen; Father Alexis and Tatiana Voogd of the Saint
Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church in Amsterdam; Father Amvrosi of Our Lady of
Tikvin Center in Oregon; Richard Deats and Virginia Baron of the Fellowship of
Reconciliation; also Maya and Rudolph Bitter, Boris Chapchal, Jacob Corret,
Jane Floyd, Hannes de Graaf, Nico van de Kamer, Father Feodor Kovalchuk, Jim
Larrick, Walter Lesiuk, Father John Meyendorff, Margot Muntz, Jan Nattier,
Donald Nicholl, Father Henri Nouwen, Father Basil Osborne, Joseph Peacock,
Mariquita Platov, Patrick and Helena Radley, Walter Sawatsky, Ivan Sewter,
Sister Mary Catherine Shambour, Lee Weingarten, and the staff of the book shop
of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral at Ennismore Gardens in London.

My thanks
to Jay Higginbotham, who first suggested this book, and to Alexander Avelichev,
director of Progress Publishers in Moscow, who welcomed the proposal. I am also
grateful to the officers and staff of the International Fellowship of
Reconciliation who made it possible for me to be in the USSR for the Millennium
events in 1988.

I owe much
to my two editors: Michael Leach of Crossroad in New York; and to the editor I
married, Nancy Forest-Flier.

* * *

Sergei
Afonin, senior editor of Progress Publishers, was my companion in travels in
the USSR in January and May 1989. His enthusiasm and hard work laid the
foundation for this book. Though he appears only occasionally in the narrative,
he merits an introduction.

Sergei is
a balding former athlete turned heavy smoker and linguist. Besides being an
almost tireless translator and enthusiast for this project, he frequently
pulled genies out of bottles, again and again getting us to the remote places I
wanted to go, no easy thing in a country where even a phone call is not so
simple and where one gets a seat on a plane only by good luck, close friendship
or major battle.

Having in
common a love of books, we rarely went past a book shop without slipping in. In
Leningrad in May, on a side street off Nevsky Prospekt we discovered a black
market in books. Even Sergei, well used to the Soviet Union’s shadow economy,
was shocked by the high prices. An illustrated children’s Bible of about a
hundred pages was 100 rubles — most of a month’s pay for many people.

What most
attracted Sergei was a recently published book about Vladimir Vysotsky, a
Soviet poet-singer, now dead, who has become a secular saint. “He was more
than a singer,” said Sergei. “He was an actor, a poet, a great human
being — and so was disliked by officialdom in Brezhnev’s era. But he was loved
by the people. His popularity cut across generational lines. He lived
intensely, drank dangerously, and at age 42 died of a heart attack. It was a
terrible loss. His wife, the French film star, Marina Vladi, wrote a book that
was published in France. Now finally it will be published here.” The book
Sergei had picked up, a photo-biography of the singer, was 40 rubles, ten times
what it had been sold for when published a few months before. It was too much
for Sergei. He reluctantly gave it back to the seller.

Sergei
remembered when good books were plentiful and cheap. “As a kid with my
small allowance, I could buy one or two classics every week and have enough
left over to go to the movies. Now books are a luxury — not only much more
expensive, but good books, especially classics, are very hard to find.”

Afterward
we sat for a long while on the embankment looking across the Neva to the
Fortress of Peter and Paul, water slapping against the stone wall. It was a
sparkling day with a huge lapus lazuli sky and a few creamy clouds.

“If
you could have lived at another time,” I asked him, “when would it
have been and what would you have done?” He thought for quite a while.
“I would rather have lived here in Saint Petersburg in the second half of
the Nineteenth Century. There was a sustained burst of creative energy in
Russia at that time. If I had my choice, I would have been an artist, musician
or composer — something in the arts.”

Like most
Russians, he is deeply troubled by what has happened in his homeland, not least
to words. “After the revolution,” he said, “many words lost
their former significance — for example, the word ‘mercy.’ We hardly know what
it means. We destroyed mercy. We also destroyed courtesy. In Pushkin’s time a
letter began with some term of respect, not just ‘comrade,’ but ‘Respected, distinguished
Alexei Alexyevich.’ It might close, ‘and now I am always your obedient and most
devoted servant.’ Now we have ‘efficient’ letters that sound like a machine
talking to a machine. The atmosphere for real communication is profoundly
damaged.”

He pointed
out the religious content that still survives in certain words. “The word
for thanks, spasiba, means God save you. The word for Sunday means the
day of the Resurrection. We still refer to a person doing good — someone who
is always near by, always blessing, whose example gives you courage — as an
angel of mercy.”

One of
our main foes in the course of our travels was Aeroflot, the world’s largest
but possibly least humane airline. It treats its ordinary Soviet passengers
like cattle and, despite efforts to handle foreigners with velvet gloves,
domestic Aeroflot flights often have much in common with travel by rural bus in
India. Like many Soviet citizens with language skills, Sergei had once worked
for Aeroflot.

“Its
problem, as in so many Soviet institutions, is a total absence of a sense of
co-responsibility. Everyone does his own segment of a job and nothing more.
Aeroflot has been severely criticized in the news media. New instructions are
issued periodically by Volkov, the Minister of Civil Aviation. Improvements are
announced. But nothing changes.”

Of the
places we travelled together, he suffered most in the country where many
visitors would have been most comfortable, Lithuania. Every hour he was
reminded of injustice done to Lithuania by the imperial Russia that became the
imperial Soviet Union — a feeling not unknown to Americans too, especially
those living or travelling abroad.

“There
is radical disagreement within me about being Russian,” he said on our
last day in Vilnius. “Sometimes I agree with Dostoyevsky that Russia will
save the world. Other times I am convinced that Russia is lost forever.
Sometimes I am proud to be Russian, sometimes miserable and deeply ashamed.
Sometimes I would rather belong to any people in the world except this one.
Other times I can’t imagine being anything else. But it impresses me when I
remember the priest who said that no Russian priest sent to serve in another
country has chosen to remain abroad.”

Though
not engaged in the Church, he is fascinated by religion and drawn to Orthodoxy.
One of the more intimate moments we shared was a priest’s blessing of a small
icon he had purchased in May in Petrozavodsk — a story told in the chapter on
Orthodoxy.

Sergei is
at home in an Orthodox church but often uncomfortable among Protestants. After
a Baptist service one day, I remember an old woman from the congregation
scolding Sergei for smoking on the dirt road in front of the church. “She
was right,” he told me later. “I know I shouldn’t smoke, especially
near a church, but I needed that cigarette. I felt uncomfortable in that
atmosphere. I don’t like that way of preaching. It’s like political speeches.
It makes me feel irritated and indignant. The pastor’s topic was love. What a
way to teach love!”

Sergei
smoked more than usual that day. The next morning at breakfast he had a
headache which he attributed to too many cigarettes the day before but he
declined my offer of aspirin: “The headache is a penance. I should
mobilize my inner forces.”

We
occasionally shared our dreams. In one of these Sergei was visited by his
father, dead many years. “He was a military officer, medical doctor and
Communist Party member,” Sergei said. “Though baptized as a child, he
had abandoned religious ideas early in his life and, so far as I know, never
thought about God. Yet in the dream my father said, ‘What you must do is repent
and forgive.'”

Sergei
was deeply impressed, regarding the dream as a word from heaven. We talked
about it for days afterward.

When I
last saw Sergei he told me that helping me with the book had been good for him.
“I was thinking recently about the seven deadly sins,” he told me.
“I found that I am guilty of three of them, maybe three-and-a-half. But it
used to be seven so I feel I am on the right way.”

Jim
Forest

The Feast of Saint Sergius
of Radonezh

October 8, 1989

Alkmaar, Holland

A SPRING BREEZE

While in Leningrad in
February, 1987, I met Nicholai Preobrajenski, a nuclear physicist who had
become a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church. He was serving as assistant
rector of the Leningrad Theological Academy. It was just four years since
Brezhnev’s death. Andropov and Chernenko had in turn briefly reigned in the
Kremlin, neither having exhibited any vital life signs between election and
burial. It was only 23 months since Gorbachev had become head of the Soviet
Communist Party. The words glasnost and perestroika still needed
to be translated as openness and restructuring. President Reagan was still
describing the Soviet Union as the evil empire. After Father Nicholai and I had
talked about his decision to leave a prestigious civil position to become a
priest, I asked him what impact Gorbachev and perestroika were having on
church life. “A new wind is blowing,” he told me. “It hasn’t yet
touched religion but we believe it will and we are beginning to live as if it
had already touched us.”[5]

“A new wind is
blowing . . . and we are beginning to live as if it had already touched us.”
Despite all the blows believers had received in the past, in 1987 a remarkable
sense of expectation had begun to flourish within Soviet churches. While
Gorbachev had as yet said nothing about a new religious policy, something
fundamental had changed. One smelled it rather than touched it. What used to be
unsaid was being said, what used to be hidden was on the screen, what used to
be unprintable was being published, and what used to thought hopeless was being
eagerly awaited.

But the rules and
institutions governing religious life were exactly as before. The actual
situation for religious life was still appalling. The Law on Religious
Associations, signed April 8, 1929, revised in 1932 and 1975, remained in force
as did the structures of enforcement.[6] Under the law religious associations lacked a juridical
personality and could operate legally only if registered. Local authorities
were required to impede or prevent registrations. (Especially among protestant
churches, there was often a principled refusal to seek registration, while
other some churches had no possibility of registration, most notably the
eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church.)

Many obstacles were erected
to make application for registration unlikely, including the rule that at least
twenty persons must make a collective application. Those applying were well
aware that a variety of costly actions might be taken against them —
investigations, a job lost, a permit not given, even false criminal charges
filed.

Associations of believers,
having no legal standing as such, had no right to own property. Buildings used
for worship were leased to believers by the Council for Religious Affairs. (The
dining hall of a Russian monastery was officially listed as a restaurant by
local authorities, the monks paying a monthly rent for its use.)

Religious rites could only
be performed in places designated for worship. Religious associations had no
right to sign contracts or to take action in court. Religious education of
children and young people was forbidden. Neither could there be any special
program of any kind for minors — no social activities, no excursions, no
participation in choirs, no playgrounds. Libraries were banned from religious premises.
The only books permitted were those recognized by state authorities as
essential for ritual purposes.

The role of priests,
ministers, rabbis, imams, and Buddhist lamas (“cult servants” in Marxist
terminology) had been greatly diminished. A decree of March 1961 deprived
clergy of any direct control over the functions of the local church, reducing
them to the status of employees of the church council. Those employed in
pastoral positions were placed in the highest tax bracket, paying far more than
other members of society.

All religious bodies were
under the administrative control of the Council for Religious Affairs, whose
role went far beyond the registration of religious communities and the leasing
of buildings for religious use. The 1961 decree permitted state authorities to
remove individual members from the executive body of churches and install
“non-fanatical persons who sincerely fulfill Soviet laws.” At times
the “non-fanatical person” — in fact someone actively hostile to
religion — might be inserted as chairman of a local church council. The same
decree urged that “priests, choir directors, church watchmen . . . and
other persons working for the church should not be included” in the
membership of the parish council.

Religious associations had
only the most limited possibilities for publishing. On the rare occasions when
Bibles were published, the editions were pitifully small. Neither were
religious associations permitted to import religious books from abroad. Bibles,
Korans and prayer books brought to the USSR by visitors were confiscated at the
border during gruelling searches at points of entry.

Only a few institutions of
religious education were permitted. The Russian Orthodox Church, with its many
million members, had only three seminaries. The Old Believers and the various
protestant churches had none. The Catholics had one. The Moslems, the country’s
second biggest religion, had two. The Jews and Buddhists had none. Nor could
the seminaries freely accept whomever they wished. The total number of students
allowed was decided by the state. No applicant could be accepted without
specific approval from the Council for Religious Affairs which in turn had the
KGB check every name.

While the 1929 law did not
explicitly ban religious engagement in charitable service, in practice
believers were excluded. In addition they were forbidden to operate hospitals,
old-age homes, orphanages, day care centers, etc., or to assist public institutions
involved in meeting human needs. Religious life was defined exclusively in
terms of “cultic” worship activity.

Despite these and other
oppressive regulations, religious associations were required to signal their
support of the political establishment in a variety of ways. It was expected
that a substantial portion of church income would be contributed to the Soviet
Peace Fund. It was anticipated that religious associations, at the national
level, would play an active role in supporting the Soviet Union’s foreign
policy, in any event never opposing the government’s actions. No Soviet
religious body protested the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia or
Afghanistan nor was there ever any public protest made by religious leaders of
actions taken against believers, though a number of courageous individuals
spoke out at the cost of arrest and imprisonment. Bishops and their
counterparts in other religions often praised the state for its attitude toward
believers.

A huge establishment of
state-sponsored atheist education was operating at full steam. Members of the
Communist Party were required “to wage s decisive struggle against
religious prejudices.” There were obligatory courses on atheism in every
school and university as well as atheist lectures at places of employment. In
addition there were frequent articles in the press and programs on television,
not so much making the case for atheism as attacking religion. Atheist posters
were commonplace. Atheist museums were to be found in every city, normally in some
former cathedral that had been confiscated. Perhaps the last form of atheist
education the most impressive, with their vivid displays of heretics being
tortured and a highly selective exposition of history that sought to show that
religious associations were led by greedy hypocrites while the institutions
they led were a central part of the machinery of oppression.

While it had been years
since clerics and lay believers were arrested en masse, imprisonment
remained a distinct possibility for anyone daring the slightest resistance.
While the exact numbers at a given moment were never known, in 1986 Keston
College had reported nearly 300 imprisoned for reasons that had a religious
basis. Though arrests were declining in early 1987, individuals like Alexander
Ogorodnikov, founder of the Christian Seminar in Moscow, remained in labor
camps.

There had been more than a
thousand Orthodox monasteries and convents in 1914 in Russia and its
territories; in 1987 there were eighteen, most of them near the country’s
western border. The others were in ruins — many churches and monasteries had
been dynamited in the thirties — or were being used for other purposes. Some
had been made into prisons and reformatories.

Once a land renowned for
its countless churches and bell towers, in 1987 thousands of towns and even
whole cities lacked any building in which prayer was permitted. Many Christians
were hundreds of miles from a living church, while for Jews, Moslems and
Buddhists the distances could be even greater. Occasionally believers gathered
in cemeteries to pray. In the whole of eastern Siberia and the Soviet far east
churches were “as rare as pigs with gold feathers.”

This was the situation in
the USSR in 1987, one year before Christians were to celebrate the Millennium
— the thousand-year anniversary of the baptism of the people of Kiev.

And yet Father Nicholai,
with countless other believers, felt some softening of the frozen earth. I felt
it too, though it wasn’t until the Millennium events in June 1988 that the
spring breeze could be really felt.

MILLENNIUM

While he let it be known
that he had been baptized as a child, during his first three years as General
Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev seemed to ignore the churches. He had been
preoccupied with strengthening his leadership position within the Politburo,
inaugurating positive relations with the United States and other western
countries, promoting disarmament, launching programs to revive the stagnant
Soviet economy, and coping with the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster. His
main gesture to believers had been the release of numerous prisoners.[7]

Then on April 29, 1988,
five weeks before the Millennium celebration was to begin, Gorbachev received
Patriarch Pimen and five Orthodox metropolitans in the Kremlin. Apart from
Gorbachev and the clerics, two others were present: Gorbachev’s friend, the
philosopher Ivan Frolov, and the Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs,
Konstantin Kharchev.[8]

That night Soviet
television viewers witnessed Gorbachev’s warm welcome to the Patriarch, saw the
bishops sitting with him around a circular conference table in the ornate Saint
Catherine Hall, and heard Gorbachev express regret for past “mistakes made
with regard to the Church and believers” in violation of the Constitution
and socialist principle. He cited the recent return to the Orthodox Church of
several monasteries and said a new law was being drafted to protect freedom of
conscience.

Patriarch Pimen responded:
“Esteemed Mikhail Sergeyevich, I pledge support to you, the architect of perestroika
and the herald of new political thinking. . . . We pray for the success of
this process and are doing everything we can to promote it.”

While most of what he said
was unremarkable, the Patriarch used the occasion to say that, though much had
improved, “not all the problems of Church life are being resolved or duly
attended to.” The comment, despite its brevity, was as unprecedented as
the meeting. In the past church leaders routinely denied troubles existed even
when the situation they faced was much worse.

The informal exchange that
followed was not broadcast but press articles reported that the bishops raised
“a number of specific questions connected with guaranteeing the normal
activity of the Orthodox Church.” According to an interview with Konstantin
Kharchev published late that year in Ogonyok, the bishops expressed
their desire to open new seminaries in Belorussia and in other republics of the
Union, to re-establish nine dioceses suppressed in the sixties and to reopen
religious associations closed in the same period. They also raised a group of
questions relating to publication work. Gorbachev promised he would “pass
on the requests and considerations to the government which would carefully
examine them and make appropriate decisions.”

It was the second time that
religious leaders had been received by the head of state since the Bolshevik
revolution. The other occasion was on September 4, 1943, two years after the
German invasion. Realizing that a change in policy toward religion would be a
positive factor in the war with Hitler, Stalin had met with Metropolitan Sergei
(soon after elected Patriarch) and two other Orthodox bishops. But it was a
private meeting. No photo was published. The image of Stalin and the
Metropolitan together was never communicated to the public. Accounts of what
occurred vary. All that is certain is that the situation for the Church changed
drastically. A Council for the Affairs of the Orthodox Church (later the
Council for Religious Affairs) was set up. Many churches were re-opened and
anti-religious propaganda sharply curtailed. The Patriarch, formerly exiled to
a log cabin on the outskirts of Moscow, was given a mansion in the Arbat
district of central Moscow, a residence previously occupied by the German
ambassador. The Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery forty miles north of
Moscow became a living monastery again and a seminary was opened within its
walls. During the fifteen-year period that followed, religious life was
partially restored in many parts of the USSR. It wasn’t until Khrushchev’s
anti-church campaign, launched in 1959, that the Soviet state resumed
full-scale war with religion.

“Until Gorbachev
received the Patriarch,” an official of the Council for Religious Affairs
told me in May 1989, “it was BC. Afterward it was AD.”

When I arrived in Moscow on
June 2, 1988 — the fifth week of this new AD — it was immediately evident
that the state was celebrating the Millennium of the baptism of Kievan Rus’[9] nearly as much as the faithful. At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport Millennium
guests were taken directly to the VIP lounge and served a cup of coffee while
awaiting delivery of their baggage. There was no border guard comparing and
re-comparing my visa photo with my face, no long wait by the baggage carousel,
no searching of luggage. I felt more like a visiting prime minister than a
religious journalist poking around in a society where God’s obituary had been
published long ago.

At the Ukraina Hotel, where
most Millennium guests were housed, an exhibition of church photography had
been mounted in the lobby. One flight up, in front of the hotel’s hard-currency
store, a large stand was set up for the sale in rubles of icon reproductions,
crosses, church badges and other religious articles manufactured by the Moscow
Patriarchate. (It proved even more popular with the hotel staff than with the
Millennium guests. For every bishop in line, there seemed to be at least two
cleaning women.)

In Moscow the center of
Millennium celebration was the Danilov Monastery, located in an industrial
district a mile south of the Kremlin. Founded in the Thirteenth Century, the
monastery had been closed in stages between 1929-32 until all that was left to
the monks was the Resurrection Church outside the walls, and finally that was
taken away as well. The monastery became a prison for juvenile delinquents.
Then in 1983 the badly-damaged monastery was returned along with the
Resurrection Church and several adjacent buildings including a former umbrella
factory.

After five years of
restoration work in which many believers volunteered their labor, the monastery
no longer showed any trace of political vandalism. Walls, bell towers, churches
and other buildings — everything looked as good as new. Several new buildings
were still under construction, including a hotel-sized hostel for church
guests.

Metropolitan Pitirim and
his staff at the Church’s Publishing Department had set up a Press Center
within the former Resurrection Church. On June 4 it was packed with reporters
and TV film crews, most of them still recovering from the just-ended Moscow
Summit meeting.

Metropolitan Filaret,
Exarch of the Ukraine, announced the major news item: the return of part of the
Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, the oldest monastic community in the Russian
Orthodox Church. Founded in 1051, it was closed in 1929 and reopened in 1941
during the German occupation. In 1961 the monks, having been limited to a small
section of the monastery, were ordered out altogether on the grounds that the
buildings were in danger of falling down. Given the neglect the structures
suffered afterward, it is a wonder that the pretext didn’t turn into a
prophecy. The section being given back was the Far Caves consisting of two
churches and the caves beneath, a bell tower and various buildings. “We
are on the verge of resuming monastic life after a pause of 25 years,”
said the Metropolitan. The keys were to be turned over at a ceremony June 7 in
Kiev.

Konstantin Kharchev of the
Council for Religious Affairs, a participant in the press conference, was asked
about new legislation being drafted that will protect religious rights. All he
would say was that the law would be published soon, depending on “the
relevant parliamentary commissions.” When asked by a reporter about how an
atheist state can undertake such positive actions on behalf of churches,
Kharchev insisted that the changes occurring did not mean that the government
was giving up its “materialistic outlook.” The changes only indicate
“that constitutional guarantees of religious rights will be fully
protected.”[10]

As there were no more
Millennium events that day, I drove out to Peredelkino, a village on the edge
of Moscow made famous by the writers who lived there, among them Boris
Pasternak. His grave is in the cemetery near the Transfiguration Church. Three
women were sitting on a bench at the foot of Pasternak’s grave. One of them
pointed out the branch of pale lavender orchids lying in front of the tomb
stone. “Nancy Reagan put them there. I saw her do it with my own
eyes.” She asked what I was eating at my hotel. I mentioned the various
kinds of meat and fish. “Well that’s not real Moscow food. You should go
into one of the local produckti [food stores] and buy two rubles’ worth
of sausages. Cook that and see how you like it! There was an article in the
press recently about sausages. They found insects, hair, paper and many other
things — everything but meat.” She had a copy of the Russian edition of Moscow
News. She pointed out a back-page interview with a young village priest.
“We never used to see anything like that in our press. I only wish they
would do to the sausage what they are doing in the press.”

The Millennium celebration
began the following day with the celebration of the Holy Liturgy in Moscow’s
Epiphany Cathedral. The chief celebrant was Patriarch Pimen, who stood more
easily than when I had last seen him sixteen months before. At that time I
doubted he would live another year. After the Liturgy he placed a wreath on the
tomb of the unknown soldier next to the Kremlin wall.

The main Millennium event
for the Russian Orthodox Church was to be the Pomestny Sobor — the
Local Council — set to start the next day, June 6. The only others in this
century had been in 1917, in the midst of the revolution at which time the
first Patriarch was elected since the time of Czar Peter the Great; 1945, after
Patriarch Sergei’s meeting with Stalin; 1961, when Khrushchev wanted the
priest’s parish role restricted; and in 1971, in the midst of Brezhnev’s
“years of stagnation.”

The day turned out to be a
fiercely sunny and hot, Moscow’s hottest weather in 109 years. I was reminded
of New York in August.

We were received at the
Holy Trinity-Saint Sergius Monastery by large crowds and the constant ringing
of bells in the monastery belfry. For years church bell-ringing was suppressed
by Soviet officials but the skill survived. Russians again were ringing bells
with the joyous abandon of children skipping rope.

The Council meeting place
was the monastery’s colorful refectory, normally used as a winter church. The
light in the large room was nearly blinding. While the Church’s last Council in
1971, also held in this hall, was completely ignored by Soviet television, this
time television crews were not only present but had set up five camera
platforms around the hall as well as installing klieg lights.

From additional TV
platforms outside cameras followed the parade of church leaders whom the bells
were welcoming: heads of other branches of the Orthodox Church, several Roman
Catholic cardinals, the Archbishop of Canterbury, representatives of the World
Council of Churches, leaders of National Councils of Churches from many
countries, and bishops and lay people from the various dioceses of the Russian
Orthodox Church.

Gogol wrote in Dead
Souls, “Russia likes to assume large dimensions: mountains, woods,
steppes, faces, lips and feet.” This applied to millennium celebrations as
well. With its cast of thousands, the event could have been designed by Cecil
B. DeMille.

The last to arrive was
Patriarch Pimen, walking slowly and with the support of two sturdy young clerics.
The Council began in sung prayer, the sound of the monastic choir bursting on
us with the refreshing force of sudden rain.

Sitting at the side of
Patriarch Pimen was Konstantin Kharchev of the Council for Religious Affairs,
conspicuous in his grey suit amid all the ecclesiastical raiment. One also was
struck by the stillness of his hands when, during the opening prayers, all
around him were crossing themselves. One of the first to address the Council,
Kharchev spoke of the state’s responsibility “to protect the rights of all
citizens, whether believers or unbelievers.”

Patriarch Pimen expressed
his satisfaction with the meeting a few days earlier of Gorbachev and Reagan.
Supporting perestroika, he called on “all the children of our
church to be honest in labor and pure, humble and loving in their service to
others.”

One of the Council’s first
items of business was to review the past. Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev said
that many participants in the Church Council held in Moscow in 1917 were
“closely bound up with” the czarist and economic system and
“were altogether alienated from the real socio-political questions
affecting the life of the people.” Thus “the majority of the Council
members did not understand the real meaning of the fundamental changes which
took place in our homeland and the positive effect they had on life.”
Proceeding to describe initial Church resistance to the Bolsheviks, Filaret
referred to the “hostile actions undertaken by the Council with regard to
the newly-established people’s power.” These “led to tension and even
confrontation between Church and State which became especially strong during
the Civil War and made a dramatic and lasting imprint on their relations.”
With the separation of church and state established by the revolution,
“the Orthodox Church lost the privileged position she had enjoyed,” a
separation begun under the conditions of “famine, economic dislocation,
anti-government conspiracies and civil war.” Filaret described the
unfolding tragedy: confrontation between believers and atheists, the mass
closure and destruction of churches and monasteries, the killing of many
believers, lay and clerical. In the early years of the revolution “the
clergy often supported the adversaries of Soviet power.” At the same time
Soviet laws on religion were often and brutally ignored. He concluded that
“every departure from democratic principles . . . dealt a blow to the
common cause of building and developing our socialist society.”

Among other speakers at the
morning session was Cardinal Willebrands, head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for
Christian Unity. He rejoiced in “the holy act of God” that had
brought the people of Kiev to the Christian faith, from whom it “rapidly spread
across huge territories.” A thousand years ago, he recalled, Christians of
east and west, despite dissension, were still in communion with one another.
But estrangement reached the breaking point. “Catholic and Orthodox fought
each other in word and with sword. It is time to overcome division, to develop
a sense of being together as Church.” He mentioned various ways in which
dialogue between Catholics and Orthodox has developed and deepened in recent
years, becoming a “dialogue of charity.” One consequence of the
encounter was the “struggle of churches for disarmament and peace to
prevent the catastrophe of nuclear war.” He pointed out that several
points of division still remain, especially questions of church structure — an
allusion to Orthodox criticism of the lack of conciliarity (the Russian word is
sobornost) in the Catholic Church. Common reflection was needed on the
special role in the Church of the Bishop of Rome, understanding that
“unity does not mean conformity of one group to another but the recovery
of unity around the eucharistic table.” Moving on to more controversial
subject, he expressed regret that there was still no recognition of the
Ukrainian Catholic Church. “Nonetheless,” he said, “a new
climate has been created in which we can heal old wounds.” He extended to
the Council and the entire Russian Orthodox Church “the greetings and
blessing of His Holiness John Paul II.”

The Archbishop of
Canterbury, Robert Runcie, described the Russian Church as “an icon of the
resurrection.” Despite severe persecution, it has risen from the tomb to
celebrate its millennium. “The martyrs have been the seed of new church
life. We honor the suffering that you have borne, we honor those who have
testified to the faith that was in them with their own lives both during the
time of the ‘cult of personality’ [as the Stalin years are called] and in more
recent times.” Russia offers a witness that “when we take God from
the center of our lives, the god-substitutes are deadly.”

The main event of the
afternoon session was the addition of nine names to the calendar of saints. The
most renowned name was Andrei Rublev, the Fifteenth Century monk whose icons of
the Holy Trinity and the Savior have made their way to churches and homes
throughout the world. Also canonized was Father Amvrosi, staretz (holy
elder) of Optina Pustyn, a monastery south of Moscow recently returned to the
Church. Amvrosi’s wisdom and holiness were so renowned in Nineteenth Century
Russia that pilgrims walked hundreds of miles to seek his advice and guidance.
Among the pilgrims was Dostoyevsky, who used Amvrosi as the model for Father
Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov.

The Russian Church has
always given special attention to iurodivii: fools for Christ’s sake,
people in whom Christ wears the guise of madness. These are ascetic Christians
living outside of the borders of conventional social behavior. At the beginning
of the Seventeenth Century there was even one holy fool who ruled Holy Russia,
Czar Theodore, the son of Ivan the Terrible. Regarded by western diplomats sent
to Moscow as a weakling and idiot, he was adored by the Russian people. Brought
up in an environment of brutality, disliked by his father, regarded with scorn
by courtiers, he took shelter in simplicity, prayer and devotion to his wife.
Much of his time was spent in church. Throughout his fourteen years as czar he
never lost his playfulness or love of beauty. A gifted bell-ringer, he often
woke the people of Moscow in the hours before dawn by sounding the great bells
of the Kremlin, a summons to prayer. “He was small of stature,”
according to a contemporary account, “and bore the marks of fasting. He
was humble, given to the things of the soul, constant in prayer, liberal in
alms. He did not care for the things of this world, only for the salvation of
the soul.”

“This simpleton,”
writes Nicholas Zernov, “robed in gorgeous vestments, was determined that
bloodshed, cruelty and oppression must be stopped, and it was stopped as long
as he occupied the throne of his ancestors.”[11]

The best known of the iurodivii
beyond Russia, if only by name, is Saint Basil, from whom the cathedral on
Red Square takes its name. Basil walked the streets of Moscow naked and dared
to condemn the behavior of Ivan the Terrible.

The Council canonized one of
the more recent iurodivii, Xenia of Saint Petersburg, who had lived in a
cemetery, worn the clothing of her dead husband and answered only to his name.
To the irritation of Leningrad officialdom, in the Soviet period her grave
continued to be a place of pilgrimage and prayer.

After each canonization was
solemnly declared, a newly made icon of the particular saint was used by the
Patriarch to bless all those present.

So ended the Council’s
first day.

While the Council continued
at Zagorsk, during the second and third day non-delegates were invited to visit
local churches. I joined a bus-load of people heading south. Our first stop was
the town of Maloyaraslavets, 75 miles from Moscow. At least a thousand people
were waiting outside the church with their young pastor, Father Vladimir
Makheev, red-bearded and with grey-blue eyes. After being welcomed by bells,
bread and salt, we went into the church, also full of people, the kind of crowd
that the church might contain on Easter when, as they say, “not an apple
can drop.”

Father Vladimir told us
something of the town and church’s history, recalling that Gogol had once
stayed in a local house and pointing out that the church is a replica, though
on a smaller scale, of Moscow’s Cathedral of the Savior.[12]

“Thanks to local
believers,” said Father Vladimir, “our church is being restored — in
fact now the restoration is nearly completed. Not long ago this church was in
danger of falling down.” Gifts were distributed. I received an Easter egg
with a painting of the restored church.

As we stood on the church
steps in the intense sun to have our picture taken, a lean middle-aged man who
hadn’t shaved in several days asked me where I was from. “America,” I
said, skipping the part about living in Holland. “You are the first person
I have met from America. Our countries have been enemies but I want to tell you
that I have never been your enemy.” He said he had read Mark Twain and
John Steinbeck. I told him I read Dostoyevsky and Gogol. He gave me a scratchy
embrace, kissing me on the cheek.

In the city of Kaluga,
another 50 miles to the south, I had lunch with Father Vladimir. I asked him if
perestroika was having much impact outside of Moscow.

“Yes,” he said,
“finally the parish priest is being allowed to play an important role in
society. Also perestroika is happening in the church. Take our church in
Maloyaraslavets. Because of the structure of church control imposed in the time
of Khrushchev, the head of our parish council was a government appointee, a man
named Vasili Osimin, an atheist who had no respect for the church. He was
typical of the period of stagnation [the standard phrase used for the Brezhnev
period]. All he wanted to do was scratch the backs of the local authorities.
The parish priest’s word meant nothing — he was simply considered an employee
whose job was to stand at the altar. The head of the parish council was doing
all he could to cause the death of our church, and having such a head of the
Parish Council isn’t rare. Many churches have this problem. But now we can be
sure that this situation will be put right. In our case money raised for the
preservation of our church, 18,000 rubles, simply disappeared. I wrote to the
bishop and also to the head of the local Council for Religious Affairs. Still the
man wouldn’t resign.

“Finally, because of
the new processes in our society, I was able to summon a parish meeting and 216
people turned up. All but 16 voted to kick him out. That was December 13, 1987,
a day I will never forget. On that day a real believer was elected to head the
parish council. And since then we have repaired the church and restored our
parish community. It is a period of restoration, at least the beginning of it.
Since that day in December, I feel I have wings on my back. We are celebrating
not only our church’s millennium but the resurrection of Christianity in the
Kaluga region. There are many times in these months when I have cried for joy.
There are many times when I couldn’t believe what was happening in front of my
eyes.”

It so happened that, as we
talked, new church legislation making the priest the head of the parish was
being submitted to the Council in Zagorsk. But already its norms were being
taken up locally.

I asked him what led him to
become a priest.

“It was, I think,
mainly my god-father. He was always watching me, caring about me. He was a
priest. He celebrated the last Holy Liturgy at the Cathedral of the Savior in
Moscow before it was destroyed. More than anyone, he inspired me to belief. He
taught me to believe, to hope, to love. Because of him I came to realize that,
when you believe from the depth of your heart, there are no obstacles in
life.”

The next morning we joined
in the Holy Liturgy at a church near our hotel, the large building packed to
capacity and the church itself embraced by huge crowds.

Afterward we were taken to
meet the local political leadership. After a long review of Kaluga’s history
and economy, the chairman of the City Council mentioned the recent return of
three local churches as well as the famous Optina Pustyn monastery elsewhere in
the Kaluga district, now undergoing restoration. Inviting responses from us, he
was probably as surprised as I at the passion and depth of what was said by
some in the audience. Speaking with a shaking voice, a woman from Australia
said she had been born in this district but left as a child in 1925. “I
will not tell you what our life was like,” she said, “or why we left,
only say that we knew much suffering. Now I see things happening here which I
thought I would never live to see. Every time I go into a church, I find myself
crying.”

Father Vladimir expressed
regret that the bishop of Kaluga couldn’t be here, as he was today at the
Church Council. In his absence, he thought it might be appropriate to appeal to
city authorities to authorize an apartment for the bishop.

A woman representing the
Russian Orthodox Church in Paris gave the City Council a small, finely made
“travelling” icon cast from brass of Saint Vladimir. “The gift
of icons to political leaders,” a neighbor commented drily, “is not
traditional. New times!”

In the hotel restaurant
afterward, Allan Boesak of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the
South Africa Council of Churches gave a brief, impromptu speech.
“Christian love and Christian solidarity,” he said, “recognize
no limits in time or space. We have no borders. Apart from the ties of
Christian love, there is another bond between my people and the people of
Russia — your solidarity with our struggle for freedom in South Africa. My
church thanks you for a thousand years of grace and mercy.”

Driving back to Moscow, we
stopped in a village lucky enough to have its own church. It appeared that
every local inhabitant was there to receive us. At the door of the church stood
a babushka offering the traditional Russian sign of welcome, bread and
salt. Inside the church, Dr. Fairy von Lilienfeld from West Germany, a
professor of Slavic studies, spoke to the villagers. Her roots are Russian, she
said. Her family fled to the west after the revolution. One of the great gifts
of Orthodoxy, she said, was its emphasis on repentance and forgiveness. She
said it was her prayer that German repentance would insure that never again
would another war come from Germany.

“The Russians have an
extraordinary capacity to forgive,” she told me on the bus afterward.
“They understand that you should never receive communion until you have
forgiven everyone. First you forgive, only then do you come to the altar. This
is one of the reasons why receiving communion is infrequent in the Russian
Church. Believers prepare for it, sometimes for weeks or months. In a Russian
village, it is understood that once someone has gone to confession and received
communion, there will never again be the renewal of an old enmity. This is part
of what we Christians in the west have to receive from the Christians in the
east.”

I recalled how, in 1943,
when German prisoners of war were marched across Red Square, Russian women
broke through police lines to give food to German soldiers, an astonishing
scene that the poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko describes in his autobiography.[13] At the time Moscow was hungry and many of the sons and husbands
of the women in Moscow were dead in the war. But when the women saw the
pathetic condition of the German soldiers, compassion took precedence over
grief and hatred. I cannot imagine such a thing happening in any other country.

Back in Moscow, Boris
Chapchal, one of the two Dutch participants in the Council, told me about what
had happened at the Council during our two days away.

The highlight was
acceptance of the new Statute of the Russian Orthodox Church. The existing
church law, said Archbishop Kirill of Smolensk, head of the drafting
commission, was completely inadequate. It was written in 1945 while the war was
still being fought, then amended in 1961 under pressure from the Khrushchev
government.

“One can say with
conviction,” Archbishop Kirill declared, “that the amendments to the
[Church’s] Regulations of 1961 were provoked not by the internal needs of the
Church but by the complicated external situation in which our Church lived in
the late fifties and early sixties. . . . The regulations the government forced
on the Church were provoked by social ideas which can no longer be tolerated in
today’s society since they are in principle in opposition to the process of
democratization, the growth of glasnost, and the struggle for perestroika.”
The 1961 amendments “separated the clergy not only from parish
administration but from the parish itself. The relation of the clergy and the
parish was based upon a contract which formally fixed the non-participation of
the clergy in the life of the parish in which they celebrated the
worship.”

The new Statute assumed
that sobornost (conciliarity) must be the basis of Church administration
“from top to bottom.” While the new statute was far from perfect,
still it provided “a realistic organization of Church administration and a
system that corresponds fully to Orthodox ecclesiology and canon law.”

After several hours of
discussion, the Statute was adopted without dissent. “Still,” one
Orthodox priest told me, “there must have been some not happy with it. Now
the parish priest is going to have to work much harder. Most are eager to do
so, but there are still too many who like to take it easy. The priest can no
longer say, ‘It isn’t my job.'”

Another highlight was a
speech by Metropolitan Anthony from London: “The Millennium is a glorious
feast,” he said, “but when we speak of the triumph of Orthodoxy, we
must realize that it is the triumph of God over the Orthodox, of truth and
light over our sinfulness and our lack of understanding. We must approach the
Millennium with a sense of wonder and gratitude. Also we must offer to God and
to the people around us both historical and personal repentance for the fact
that, historically, the Russian Church failed the Russian nation throughout ten
centuries, because otherwise millions of people would not have fallen away from
their faith in Christ at the first challenge. This was because baptism was
given but education was not.”

Arriving at Zagorsk the
next morning, I joined the procession into the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity to
venerate the body of Saint Sergius, the monastery’s founder, who taught that
contemplation of the Trinity would dissolve all discord.

Among events at the
Council’s final day was a call by the head of the Orthodox Church in America,
an independent church that grew out of the Russian Orthodox Church, for the
canonization of Tikhon, elected to lead the Russian Orthodox Church just as the
revolution was occurring in 1917. While opposing the Bolsheviks, he also
refused to give his blessing to those who went to war against Red rule.
Eventually he became a prisoner before deciding that the Church should provide
the same degree of cooperation to the Communists that it had offered the state
when it was led by the czars. His name is linked with the severe persecutions
Russian Christians have suffered.[14]

The morning session ended
with a panikhida (memorial service) for soldiers who had died in
Afghanistan. They had, said Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev, “fulfilled their
civil and patriotic duty and had given witness to the teaching of Jesus that
there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another.” It is
true, as Filaret said, that “thousands of mothers are left in grief.”
No doubt it is hard to say to those mothers that their sons fought in an unjust
war forced on the population by a handful of old men far from the battlefield.
One longs for the day when the Russian Orthodox Church will grieve for all who
fall in war, cry out against military interventions by the Soviet army, and
support those who refuse to fight such wars.

After lunch in the
seminary, I wandered around the grounds of the Holy Trinity Monastery, a
“city of churches” that has never ceased to be a place of pilgrimage
even in those years when the monks had been driven out. “There are still
those who walk here even if it is a walk of thousands of miles,” a Russian
friend told me. But the main body of pilgrims could have stepped off the Moscow
Metro, people of every age and condition of life, including many teenagers and
young adults.

The Council ended with a
closing service of thanksgiving and a brief speech by Patriarch Pimen in which
he expressed confidence that the Russian Orthodox Church would continue to
develop and grow stronger in its task of “sanctifying her children.”

The next day Millennium
events shifted to the Bolshoi Theater. When the curtain opened about a hundred
people were sitting in tiers on the stage. In the center of the first row was
Patriarch Pimen. Raisa Gorbachev was sitting a few places to his right, next to
Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk, head of the External Church Affairs Department
of the Russian Orthodox Church. During some of the more tedious speeches they
took to conversation. I counted eight whispered exchanges between them during
the four-hour meeting.

Among those on stage was
Georgi Arbatov, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and an
architect of Soviet foreign policy. He had recently told a Time reporter,
“We are going to do something terrible to you. We are going to deprive you
of an enemy.”

The main speech was by
Metropolitan Yuvenali of Krutitsky and Kolomensky. I have warm feelings for
him. In 1986 we exchanged rosaries — he gave me the one he wore on his wrist,
and I gave him one I had received from Pope John Paul II.

Talking about the cultural
impact of Christianity, Yuvenali spoke of the improvement in the status and
security of women, the introduction of book publishing, the Russian Church’s
contribution to the spread of Christianity, the commitment to the poor, and
Church’s role both in the defense of the nation and as a peacemaker. He
reaffirmed the Church’s hope that the celebration of the start of
Christianity’s third millennium in the year 2000 would be a celebration of the
“elimination of all weapons of mass destruction.” He said the
ecumenical commitment of the Russian Orthodox Church “is inseparable from its
peacemaking responsibility.”

The speech lacked the
triumphal note one might have expected. Yuvenali noted that the Church has also
contributed to division in the world, adding, “We ask God and the people
to forgive us for our imperfections.”

It was the first speech by
a Russian Orthodox leader providing statistics about the Church’s population.
Yuvenali estimated that 50,000,000 Soviet citizens identified themselves as
Russian Orthodox (out of a population of 285,000,000) and reported that
30,000,000 Russians have been baptized since 1971 Council. It may be the figure
was not provided in the past because the state required that baptisms be
officially registered. Many of the 30,000,000 were not. A few months ago the
requirement was dropped.

Stressing the connection of
faith to social responsibility, Yuvenali quoted Dostoyevsky: “Our Church
should be in us, not merely in our words but in our entire life.”

Metropolitan Filaret of
Kiev spoke of the trials the Church had passed through, all the while sharing
the fate of the people. “As a result of perestroika and glasnost,
we have a much better relationship with the state.” He hoped the new
developments could help overcome historic divisions among Russian Christians.
“The longing for unity is a characteristic quality of our people.”

No doubt responding to
widespread disappointment that the Council had not canonized any of the martyrs
who had perished in the period of Communist rule, Metropolitan Mefodi of
Veronezh said that “the times were not ripe” — suggesting by implication
that the Church anticipates a time when such canonizations will occur.

Cardinal Casaroli,
Secretary of State for the Vatican, said that “Christianity is an
undisputed fact of reality, one that cannot be ignored in any country without
ill effect.” In every society, Christianity offers, even to those without
specific religious belief, certain ethical standards. “For many difficult
questions, it is impossible to find a solution without morals.” Noting the
“new winds blowing here,” he called for “new legislation to
safeguard freedom of conscience.” (Sitting next to Cardinal Casaroli was
Cardinal Glemp, Primate of the Polish Church. A Vatican adviser on the Russian
Orthodox Church told me in 1987 that Glemp’s visit should precede that of the
Pope.)

Arie Brower of the National
Council of Churches in the United States gave thanks to God “for the
victory of the resurrected Christ witnessed in the thousand-year history of the
Russian Orthodox Church. We remember those who have lived and died in the Lord,
especially those who have given witness with their blood.” He had learned
that the destinies of Americans and Russians “are bound up with one
another” and was glad that the Millennium celebration was providing the
occasion “for American Christians to learn more about Christianity in the
Soviet Union.” One consequence was a campaign of young people in American
churches to send birthday greetings to Christians in the USSR. Of the tens of
thousands of hand-made cards that have been sent so far, Brower presented Patriarch
Pimen with a birthday card six yards long, filled with crayon-drawings of a
thousand burning candles made by many young hands.

Among the other American
speakers was Billy Graham. “I had many letters from people in the U.S. who
were praying in support of the meeting of President Reagan and Secretary
Gorbachev in Moscow,” he said. “Most people never dreamed a person of
such conservative convictions as President Reagan would participate in a
breakthrough like this. We have been too isolated from each other.” The
Baptist paid his respects to Orthodoxy: “The Russian Orthodox Church has
much to teach us. One of the great experiences of my life has been getting to
know Russian Orthodox Christians. They have deepened my life, made me more
aware of the power of the resurrection, and that the crucifixion and
resurrection are the central facts of history.”

The day ended with a
Millennium concert at the Bolshoi with Patriarch Pimen seated in a box adjacent
to the stage. Raisa Gorbachev again was present. The event was broadcast live
throughout the USSR and in several other countries. While many famous choirs
and orchestras took part, the most sustained applause was given to the
non-professional choir of monks and seminarians from the Holy Trinity Monastery
at Zagorsk. No choir of believers had ever sung on the stage of the Bolshoi
Theater since at least 1917. The next night the event was repeated in the
presence of Mikhail Gorbachev.

The next day, June 11,
police cars shepherded our buses through one of the gates in the Kremlin walls
where we were taken to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet near the Kremlin’s
Savior Tower. The main hall is a high, windowless chamber of clinical white
marble with gold trim decorated only with the gilded emblem of the USSR.

Our host was Andrei
Gromyko, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and President of the Council of
Ministers of the USSR — in other words head of state, but in a country where
it is the head of the Party who is really in charge. Patriarch Pimen was
sitting at his side. On the other side was Konstantin Kharchev of the Council
for Religious Affairs. Gromyko, as poker-faced live as on film, gave a
welcoming address in which he recognized the celebration of the Millennium of
the baptism of Kievan Rus as having universal significance. Christianity has
influenced “every aspect of life — economics, education, and social
care.” The Church had played a crucial role in periods of crisis and had
contributed to the unity of the nation. It had shaped the nation’s spiritual
values and given birth to new art, sculpture, architecture, music and
literature. While church and state were separated after 1917, they had found a
meeting point in their common concern for peace in the world. “We want a
world without war, a world without violence. We want policies based on the
integrity and inter-dependence of the world. All of us, whether believer or
unbeliever, have to ask what the coming generation will inherit from us?”

In the question period that
followed, Gromyko said he could offer few details about the new legislation
being written on freedom of religion. “The draft is being developed and I
hope will be ready before long.” The separation of church and state, a
basic constitutional principle, will remain, but religious organizations will
be permitted to engage in charitable public service. Bibles and other religious
literature can be imported into the country. In cooperation with local
authorities, religious bodies will be able to play a role in the conservation
of historical monuments (these are mainly churches which, everyone realizes,
will eventually be used for the purposes for which they were originally built).

Cardinal Willebrands,
noting appreciatively what had been achieved already, expressed his hope that
“under perestroika there will be further developments” in the
protection of religious rights. In particular “we are concerned about our
Church in the USSR, in the Baltic states, White Russia and the Ukraine. It
would be a great help in promoting friendship and unity if we could resolve the
question about the organization of our Church in your country and find the way
to form priests and maintain church structures.”

The Vatican Secretary of
State, Cardinal Casaroli, asked if representatives of the different confessions
could present comments to the new religious law while it was still in draft
form. “It would be quite logical to know the view of the churches in the
preparation process,” Gromyko said. Casaroli added that never before had
the Vatican sent such a delegation to the Soviet Union. “It is
unprecedented, a sign of special respect for the Russian Orthodox Church and
the people of the Soviet Union.” Casaroli spoke of Moscow as the
“third Rome,” referring to the Russian idea that the mantle of
religious leadership moved from Rome to Constantinople, and from
Constantinople, after the Moslem conquest, to Moscow. While one assumes
Casaroli sees no need for a second or third Rome, it was striking that he
admitted religious leadership has more than one address.

Patriarch Pimen, the last
to speak, expressed his joy that such a meeting could occur in the Kremlin.
There had been nothing like it since Lenin came to power. He pledged to do
“everything we can to encourage Soviet and American cooperation in
disarmament.”

At the end of the meeting
Gromyko invited us to a meal. This turned out to be a sumptuous buffet in the
most handsome of all Kremlin locations, the majestic Saint George Hall, last
used for a reception honoring President Reagan. While we ate, a priest
described the Russian family. “The husband is like the government, and the
wife is like the Party.” So far in Russia, he said, the government has all
the honor while the Party makes the decisions. “The government and party
will be re-negotiating the terms of their not entirely happy marriage at the
coming special meeting of the Communist Party.”

I talked briefly with
Cardinal John O’Connor from New York. He was in a fairly hot state, annoyed
that the car, driver and translator he had been promised were in fact rarely to
be found. “This isn’t how they are taking care of Cardinal Casaroli,”
he said. “You can bet he has a car and translator when he wants it!”

One of the high points of
the Millennium happened that night. It occurred neither in a church nor
monastery but on Soviet television screens with the nationwide broadcast of a
film about Russian Orthodoxy called “Church.”

The sixty-minute film began
with scenes of the reconstruction of a village church. “Everybody is happy
about our church,” said a member of the parish council, “and everyone
is helping, even the elderly and the sick. A lot of people are giving money to
help — 10 or 20 kopeks, even a ruble.”

A priest in Vladimir,
Father Dimitri, spoke about religious life in his large family. “My wife
is in charge of the spiritual upbringing of the children. She starts reading
the Bible to them the moment they are able to understand.” There were
scenes of a name-day celebration for two of the children, Olga and Vladimir.
“After the revolution,” he said, “many things changed, but moral
principles remain always the same. The question is still what is the point of
departure in your life. For us it is God.”

There were black-and-white
film clips about the campaign against churches and believers in the twenties
and thirties: icons being thrown into bonfires, church crosses being cut down,
onion domes and bells being pulled off church tops and smashed, the dynamiting
of the Savior Cathedral in Moscow: scene after scene of cultural barbarism.

The longest interview was
with Father Nicholai, a priest who seemed as old as Russian Orthodoxy. He sat
at the kitchen table in his small wooden house holding a cup of tea in his
hand, his face shining with unaffected love.

“The time goes
fast,” he said. “Hour after hour — it goes and you can’t get it
back. Be thrifty about time! You only get so many hours. It is like sand
pouring through your fingers. I stand near the doors of death. I am 78. Not
bad. I have been a priest for many years. I love my work. I love God.” He
paused to cross himself. “With God a person is able to do a lot.”

He serves an island church
on Chudskoye Lake northwest of Pskov. “Our fishermen work hard. They go
out even in bad weather. They do good work. We pray and ask God to save us from
calamity, sickness and war. Save us, Lord!” The camera showed a woman
standing under grey skies at the water’s edge, a chapel nearby.

“The old people die
and the young people leave. Not so many of the young go to church any
more.” He paused and gazed out the window, speechless with grief.

The screen faded from him
to kids on motorbikes roaring through a cemetery. The adjacent church had been
turned into a youth club. Hard rock pounded in the former sanctuary. The din
gave way to a solo male voice singing a hymn of mourning. The night club was
replaced by birds flying in the cupola of a church crumbling into ruin.

The camera returned to
Father Nicholai. “My father died in 1914,” he said. “I stayed
with my brothers. They went to war and never came back. But we are still
alive.” He crossed himself. “For this I thank the heavenly Father. We
live in abundance. We have bread and sugar, work and rest. For this I thank
God. I give money to the Peace Fund. By doing it I hope all acts of war will
end. I hope it helps. War shocks young people. Life is just beginning for them
and then suddenly it is over.”

As he spoke about war, the
screen shifted to a Leningrad cemetery where those who died in the siege are
buried. A young mother was showing her child how to cross himself.

Father Nicholai’s gentle
face returned. He offered tea to the interviewer and the cameraman.
“Please! Don’t be embarrassed. But it’s probably cold.”

In another interview a
young woman said, “You have to believe in God. Without God, you are dead.
Religious faith is life itself.”

A nun was shown praying
while making bread. She explained, “Human work that isn’t framed by prayer
has no meaning. Prayer is the only answer to the industrial age. Otherwise the
machine will destroy us.”

Father Zinon of the
Monastery of the Caves near Pskov was questioned about icons. Those he paints
are already regarded as treasures of Orthodoxy. “Icons aren’t meant for
museums,” he said. “The Vladimirskaya [the most famous of Russian
icons, now part of the Tretyakov Gallery collection] isn’t for a museum! It is
nonsense to call them a cultural expression. Icons are an expression of the
spiritual life. They relate us to love and peace and mercy. The creation of God
is beauty itself. In the icon the beautiful is seen in the light of holiness.
Icons should be returned to the places for which they were blessed.”

“I am amazed they
showed it,” said a friend watching the film with me. “It was shown in
a few cinemas but millions will have seen it on television who could never have
seen it in the theater. A few months ago there was an article about whether it
was safe for atheists to see it!”[15]

The next day, Sunday, was
cool and windy, not ideal for an outdoor Liturgy, but the rain that threatened
never came. A specially erected platform in the courtyard of the Danilov
Monastery held both the altar and the more prominent church representatives, including
nine Catholic cardinals, more than I had ever seen in one place before.
“Actually there are nine-and-a-half Cardinals,” Etienne De Jonghe,
General Secretary of Pax Christi International, pointed out. “The
Archbishop from Hungary is soon to get the red hat.”

Presiding at the Liturgy
with Patriarch Pimen were the heads of other Orthodox Churches: Patriarch
Diodorus I of Jerusalem, Patriarch Ignatios IV of Antioch, Patriarch Iliya of
Georgia, Patriarch Teoctist of Cyprus, and Patriarch Maxim of Bulgaria.

Communion was distributed
at ten points among the crowd — estimated at 10,000 — that filled a large
area within the Danilov walls. While there are long lines for everything in
Russia, usually the communion lines are short, but not on this occasion. I had
never seen so many people receiving communion in Russia, where a profound awe
for the presence of Christ in the Eucharist inspires preparation involving days
or even weeks of prayer, searching out any trace of enmity in one’s life, and
finally confession.

The body language for
receiving communion is quite special: both arms folded cross-wise on the chest,
a simple gesture that suggests both submission and presence with Christ on the
cross. Orthodoxy has not given up the body language of prayer: crossing
oneself, kneeling, bowing down to the ground, kissing icons, and many other
gestures in which body and soul are knit together. Communion is given slowly
and by name: “The servant of God, [name], partakes of the holy precious
body and blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, unto remission of
sins and everlasting life.” To receive communion anywhere in the world is
immensely significant, but for it to happen for an American in a monastery in
Moscow within a long line of Russians, is — as Thomas Merton once said about a
certain ancient monk on Mount Athos — “to be kissed by God.”

Speaking after the Liturgy,
Poland’s Cardinal Glemp welcomed the newly canonized Orthodox saints, a
suitable stress as it was the Feast of All the Saints Who Illumined Russia.
“How wonderful that these new saints are added to your iconostasis, and
such a variety of people.” He drew attention to one of the most recently
canonized Catholic saints, Maximillian Kolbe, the Polish priest who gave his
life to save a Jew when they were both prisoners in Auschwitz. “Father
Kolbe went to a place of suffering to bring God’s love, to pray, and to offer
his service.” The Cardinal expressed his special feelings for “the
people of this land, who have experienced so much suffering yet have always
overcome their difficulties.”

At a meal afterward in the
Praga Restaurant at the end of Arbat Street, Patriarch Pimen expressed
gratitude. “From all our hearts we thank the leaders of our country for
their understanding of the needs of believers. . . . One can hardly
overestimate the importance of what has been done by the state to help our
Church conduct this celebration in the proper way.”

Over the meal a young
Russian translator asked, “Please explain God to me.” She told me
about the joy of having a child and her longing to have another despite the
numerous obstacles to family life and parenthood in Moscow. After a little
while we were talking about the words from John: “God is love, and he who
abides in love, abides in God, and God in him.” She copied down the verse,
entirely new to her. “I don’t know if I am Orthodox,” she said,
“but I know I am a believer. I have so much to learn.”

The next day, Monday, was
the ground-breaking ceremony for what will be the first new church in Moscow
since 1917. Just as important is the fact that it is in a modern part of the
city on the city’s southeast edge where there are no churches. Though dedicated
to the Holy Trinity, perhaps it will be nick-named Perestroika Cathedral. The
word was used over and over again as we stood around the church’s huge
cornerstone. Konstantin Kharchev, speaking on behalf of the government, said
that the new church will be “a symbol of perestroika and a symbol
of the right of religious believers to have the churches they need.”
Patriarch Pimen said that the new church represents the fulfillment of his
life’s hopes. “Thanks to perestroika, relations between church and
state are changing for the better, as this cathedral will bear witness.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
from South Africa rejoiced in the new church and all it stands for. “It is
a sign that Christianity has a contribution to make in each society, especially
in affirming the infinite worth of each person.”

The location of the new
church is stunning. The site is within a large park, just above Tsaritsino
Ponds. The ground is high — the church will be visible for miles in every
direction. “The sound of its bells will carry far,” a priest standing
at my side said with satisfaction. “Even more important,” said one of
the translators, “it is near a Metro station [the Orechovo stop].”

The Americans taking part
in the Millennium celebration were invited to Spaso House, the residence of the
U.S. Ambassador, where we discovered not only the embassy staff and trays of
hot pizza awaiting us but several prominent dissidents, among them Father Gleb
Yakunin.

Father Gleb had been among
the most outspoken opponents of state interference in Church life and Church
compliance with state direction. In 1965 he wrote an open letter to the former
Patriarch, Alexi, describing the Russian Orthodox Church as dangerously ill
largely because the bishops were compromised by their obedience to atheist
directives. Soon afterward the Patriarch suspended him. In 1975 he co-authored
an appeal to the World Council of Churches asking it to increase its attention
to Christians suffering for their faith. In 1976 he was a founder of the Christian
Committee for the Defense of Believers’ Rights, sending reports west about
violations of the human rights of believers. In 1979, arrested on the charge of
anti-Soviet agitation, he was condemned to five years at a strict-regime labor
camp. Internal exile in Siberia followed.

Freed in 1987 and permitted
to return to the capital, he was assigned a parish north of Moscow near Zagorsk
by the Orthodox Church. In April he had signed an open letter urging Patriarch
Pimen to retire so that a younger person could lead the church “more
energetically.” (One priest in Moscow said that this proposal saddened
him. “The Patriarch’s legs and kidneys may not be well but his mind and
heart are strong. Does your father have to be healthy to be your father?”)

A few days before Father
Gleb had been one of three people invited to address Reagan at a meeting in
Spaso House. Afterward he told reporters, “It is only after meeting the
President that you realize how deep is his commitment to human rights.”
Reading this, I hoped that Father Gleb would one day have the chance to look at
the U.S. from the perspective of those whose human rights were a matter of
slight concern in the White House. But talking with him in the Ambassador’s
residence, our conversation was instead entirely about the situation in the
Soviet Union. He described recent events in the USSR as “miraculous.”
At the same time he was worried that “the celebration will screen
awareness of the problems that remain to be solved.”

“There is much
vitality at the parish level,” he said. “Last Sunday we had twenty
baptisms. The Church is attracting many people, but there is a desperate need
for religious education. We don’t have religious literature. The Church has
recently published a new edition of the Bible but it is very expensive and
there are not nearly enough copies.”

At the airport waiting for
our flight to Kiev, I asked Billy Graham what had led him to undertake his
first trip to the USSR in 1982 despite advice from Vice President Bush not to
go. “I had been briefed at the Pentagon about what would happen if there
was a nuclear war,” he replied. “I had been to Auschwitz and seen how
limitless is our capacity for evil. And I was thinking about Paul saying in his
first letter to the Corinthians that he was called to be all things to all
people. I realized I had closed myself to the people in the Soviet Union. So I
felt I had to say yes to the invitation I received from the Russian Orthodox
Church inviting me to take part in a peace conference they were preparing in
Moscow.”

We arrived in Kiev the
night of June 13. At the hotel where we were staying I found some of the
birthday cards American children had sent for the Millennium via the National
Council of Churches. Shawn White in Anderson, South Carolina, wrote, “I am
interested in knowing if you are a Christian. Happy 1000th birthday, Russian,
whoever you are!” Kristi Matochi in El Campo, Texas, wrote in white
letters on heavy black paper: “Hi, I’m Kristi, 13 years old, a girl! I
like Heavy Metal and boys and my favorite color is black. Please write to me.
Happy birthday.”

The next morning there was
a meeting in the Kiev Opera House that was similar to the one held a few days
before at the Bolshoi. By choosing a back row seat, I was able to read Gogol’s Dead
Souls during some of the more boring or repetitive speeches. Gogol seemed
to have the face of a local official of the Council for Religious Affairs when
he wrote: “There was absolutely nothing in him: neither wickedness nor
goodness, and there was something terrifying in this absence of anything.”
What was most striking about the official’s face was his utter lack of
enthusiasm. One assumed he had received word from on high that he must now to
do all sorts of things that previously it was his job not to do. More
impressive were the entirely benevolent faces of Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev
and Metropolitan Yuvenali, who could easily be turning victor’s grins toward
those officials who for so many years blocked the way.

Cardinal Willebrands was
among the speakers, an important moment for the Catholics in the Ukraine.
“The feast we are celebrating is an occasion for dialogue,” he said,
“a requirement that unfortunately is very often neglected. We need a
dialogue between the believer and the non-believer, between faith and atheism.
The state has tried to humiliate religion, to reduce it to a pathology. Now it
offers signs of respect and a readiness to engage in dialogue.” He noted
that often believer and non-believer interpret the same facts differently, for human
understanding often centers on oneself rather than on others. “Glasnost,
the clarity of words expressing faith and wisdom, is the basis of a healthy
culture. A new epoch is emerging in our world, an epoch that admits that it has
not got all the answers but has the courage to hear the answers.”

Vespers was at Saint
Vladimir’s Cathedral. The streets around were crowded. Inside, the huge church
was filled to bursting and only those with invitations were being allowed to
join the congregation. Even showing my plastic-encased Millennium identity
card, I was told, “Nyet, nyet, nyet!” With all the authority I could
muster, I said, “Da, da, da!” Then the gate opened enough for me to
slip inside. I was lucky to find a bit of space right against the iconostasis.
The television lights made it painful to look toward the congregation.

Billy Graham was invited to
speak. Metropolitan Filaret stood at his side. It was a vintage Graham sermon:
“My grandfather never dreamed of the changes that have happened in our
world — space travel, color television, travel from continent to continent in
a few hours by jet airplane. But some things never change. Interest in religion
never changes. The nature of God never changes.” He spoke about God’s love
for each person, a love we cannot damage by our sins. Graham recalled a Moscow
lady who told him, “I am a great sinner.” He responded, “I too
am a great sinner, but we have a great savior.” He recalled Prince
Vladimir and his conversion. “He turned away from idols and destroyed
them, opening a new path in life not only for himself but for millions of
others right down to our own time. God never changes, but you and I must change
just as Prince Vladimir changed a thousand years ago.” He ended his sermon
saying, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit.” The congregation replied in one voice, “God save you!”

That night Soviet
television again caught me by surprise with “Mother Maria,” a film
dramatizing the life of a Russian woman who surely one day will be canonized.
Though among the revolutionaries in her youth, she finally had to flee the
Bolsheviks, finding refuge in Paris. After the disintegration of the marriage,
she became a nun and founded a refuge in Paris for homeless Russians. There was
a scene in the film where she is talking to a young exile who wants to fight
the Communists. “But you will be fighting your brothers, not
Communists,” she says to him. During the war, after rescuing many Jews,
she was arrested by the Gestapo. She died in Ravensbrück March 30, 1945, taking
the place of another prisoner.

“However hard I
try,” she said, “I find it impossible to construct anything greater
than these three words, ‘Love one another’ — only to the end, and without
exceptions: then all is justified and life is illumined, whereas otherwise it
is an abomination and a burden.” Her reasons for centering her vocation on
hospitality had a profound theological basis: “The bodies of fellow human
beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches
us to give our brethren not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well.
Even our last shirt, our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal
almsgiving and the most wide-ranging social work are equally justifiable and
necessary. The way to God lies through love of other people and there is no
other way. At the Last Judgment I shall not be asked if I was successful in my
ascetic exercises or how many prostrations I made in the course of my prayers.
I shall be asked, did I feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and
the prisoners: that is all I shall be asked.”[16]

“It is the third time
this film has been shown on television,” a pastor in Kiev told me.
“It is amazing. She was a most cultured person. She knew Berdyaev and Blok
— her book on Blok is finally going to be published here, forty years after
she wrote it. She loved colors and flowers. She had a gift for breathing life
and hope into despairing people. Of course what she did in the war made her a
hero, but it is clear that what gave her the courage to do what she did was not
political ideology but religious faith. In fact her political ideology was all
wrong from the point of view of marxism!”

The Holy Liturgy at Saint
Vladimir’s the next morning brought out an even larger crowd than had been
there for Vespers. A good sound system had been installed outside the church so
that those unable to get inside could listen. In fact they had a better chance
to hear everything than those packed together within the walls.

Cardinal Willebrands and
two other cardinals were present. Willebrands has a round, pink face without a
trace of guile. He seemed not to be familiar with the Orthodox Liturgy, which,
if so, is remarkable, given the fact that he heads the Vatican’s Secretariat
for Christian Unity. But at least there was no air of condescension or boredom
— rather complete fascination. He watched with the eyes of a child at the
circus. At appropriate moments, taking cues from other worshippers, he shyly
crossed himself.

There was a long line of
people for communion and I happened to be standing close by. I was freshly impressed
with how the human face shines brightest at moments of deep prayer and love.

“It is not a
coincidence,” a local priest, Father Boris Udovenko, told me over lunch,
“that perestroika in our country coincides with the millennium. In
fact I think it is out of the spiritual life of our country that perestroika
was born, and that the anticipation of the millennium gave the country an
inspiration to look at everything from the point of view of spiritual values.
But we are very far from realizing what we now dare to imagine. There are still
thousands of officials who don’t want to change and don’t want to step down,
who like being little czars.” He said the man who is curator of the museum
at the Monastery of the Caves is one of those who is quite unhappy to see the
church receiving back even a minor part of the monastery. “This man claims
to be a historian, but he is actually a former restaurant manager. He likes
having a famous museum better than having a third-rate restaurant.”

“Many powerful
civilizations have perished because they lost their moral foundations,”
said Metropolitan Filaret in a luncheon speech. “Under perestroika,
the spiritual and moral foundations of society are of tremendous importance.
Our guests are seeing with their own eyes what is happening because of perestroika.
They can see how perestroika has touched relations between Church and
State. It would have been unimaginable ten years ago. Ten years ago we could
also not imagine that there would be the destruction of a whole class of nuclear
weapons. We can now have the hope that we can meet the year 2000 without
weapons of mass slaughter. One or two people cannot do this, but it can happen
if we all play our role. If something tragic should happen — God forbid! — we
will all be victims, and we will all face the judgment of God where we will
each receive according to our deeds. Let us hope for the best. Faith, hope and
love give us the force to overcome evil in the world. Let us raise our glasses
to the possibility of the long-awaited peace. May we recognize each human being
as a brother or sister.”

The evening concert at the
Opera House, featuring the choir of Saint Vladimir’s Cathedral, was shown live
throughout the Ukraine. A number of the hymns had been composed at the
Monastery of the Caves when it was still active. The painted backdrop was of a
church setting under a huge icon of the Savior’s face and an Orthodox cross.

The next morning, June 16,
Kiev’s gaze was centered on the three hills above the Dnieper River which
support the Monastery of the Caves. The highest hill, with the largest complex
of churches and buildings, remains a museum, but the two lower hills plus the
caves were returned to monastic use June 7. The monks had set up an outdoor
chapel in front of one small church.

By 9 o’clock clergy shining
in gold and green liturgical vestments stood around the altar. Close at hand
were foreign guests, the press and a choir. Beyond them, stretching half-a-mile
away until heads disappeared over the crest of a hill, were thousands of people
from Kiev and beyond. The geography of the hillside and monastery complex was
such that lines of participants unfolded in other directions so that, from the
air, the crowd took the shape of a tree with budding branches, the altar
marking the point where the tree was rooted in the earth.

Among those around the
altar was a wiry old man with wispy white beard, one of the monks who had been
driven away from the monastery a quarter-century ago. His face constantly
attracted my gaze. He has lived long enough not only to return to his home but
to see hatred of religion give way to respect. One local woman who managed to
get near the altar through a back gate spent most of the Liturgy with her knees
on the cobblestones, her thick fingers folded together and her lips moving in
constant but silent prayer. Her attention never wavered from the direction of
the altar though all she could see were the backs of priests.

After the distribution of
communion, I wandered toward the back of the crowd exploring faces. Attention
was so focused on the Liturgy that I was hardly noticed, though in most cases
when I asked to take a photo of a particular person or family assent was given
and friendly eyes were turned my way.

“The lamp of the
monastery that was extinguished in this sacred place is lit again,”
Metropolitan Filaret told the crowd. “The monastery was built by faith,
and after many trials and tribulations, we have received back part of our holy
cloister. We will immediately resume the work of being a monastery where
believers can bring their griefs, their joys, their plea for forgiveness and
all their needs.” Twenty monks have moved in already.

The Millennium event that
will still be talked about a century from now was the commemoration of the
Baptism of Rus that occurred late that afternoon at the foot of the monumental
Saint Vladimir statue above the Dnieper River. What made this much more than it
might have been was bad weather. Half an hour before the ceremony was to begin,
rain began to fall, not just rain but a torrent that turned the steep streets
of Kiev into spillways. It was a kind of rain I have rarely known in twelve
years of living in grey, wet Holland where one should be born wearing a rain
coat.

The rain had no impact at
all on Russian involvement in the baptismal celebration. People who had been
standing on the hillside above the towering statue of the cross-bearing Saint
Vladimir since eight in the morning remained rooted to their spots. With or without
protection, no one budged except some of the foreign guests. After an hour in
the rain I was more than ready to seek shelter in the bus, but hung on because
of the example of Father Alexis Voogd, pastor of the Russian Orthodox Church in
Amsterdam. It was he who made me notice some of the faces around us: “Look
at how they are praying!” They were praying with such absorption that they
seemed oblivious to the downpour.

An old monk and three nuns
were by our side, kept somewhat dry by a big sheet of transparent plastic they
used as a common umbrella. Their black clothing was worn thin, looking as old
as themselves. On the other side was a family clustered under one large
umbrella. I realized that for most of the people present, the rain wasn’t a
burden but a blessing. The baptism of Rus’ was being renewed. As we hadn’t
waded into the river, the water had risen to us, and all Kiev was being doused
anew: believer and unbeliever, Orthodox and Baptist, atheist and agnostic,
journalist and policeman.

Then, perhaps fifteen
minutes before the end of a ceremony centering on the blessing of water, just
when prayers of thanksgiving were being sung, the grey clouds parted and we
were in the spotlight of the sun. It was as if we were on the stage of the
Bolshoi Theater in Moscow rather than the steep hillsides above the Dnieper
River in Kiev.

THE ORTHODOX

According to the Primary
Chronicle, Saint Nestor’s Tale of Bygone Years written at Kiev’s
Monastery of the Caves, Prince Vladimir realized that the time had come to embrace
a religious tradition of world standing. Taking great care to make the right
choice, he sent emissaries to investigate the religions of neighboring
countries. They went to synagogues, mosques, and to both Latin and Greek
Christian churches. Receiving Vladimir’s representatives in Constantinople, the
Patriarch brought them to a service in the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom)
Cathedral. Incense filled the air, choirs sang, the clergy wore vestments
radiant with candle light, icons gave witness to the link between earth and
heaven, time and eternity. The emissaries wrote to Vladimir: “We knew not
whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on earth there is no such splendor
or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God
dwells among these people and that their services are fairer than the
ceremonies of other nations. We can never forget that beauty.”[17]

On a June day in 988, the
people of Kiev, carrying banners and icons, went in procession into the Dnieper
River and were baptized. “Joy was seen throughout heaven at the sight of
so many souls being saved,” the Chronicle records. That same summer the
Christian faith spread to the cities of Novgorod, Rostov, Vladimir and
Belgorod.

Before his conversion
Vladimir was, says Nestor, “a man insatiable in vice.” Afterward he
became renowned for his care of the poor, of orphans and the sick. The palace
gates were opened to the hungry. He built hospices for the aged. Rejecting the
views of his Orthodox mentors from Greece, he prohibited torture and execution
of criminals. He was named a saint not only for bringing Christianity to the
ancient land of Kievan Rus’ — thus given the title Equal of the Apostles —
but because of his wholehearted devotion to the teaching of Jesus.

Among the fifteen Orthodox
Churches, the Russian Church is fifth in rank (after the four ancient
Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria) and largest
in size: 50,000,000 was the estimate given at the Millennium celebration.

Charity in Moscow

On June 20, 1988, Moscow’s
evening television news program reported that Patriarch Pimen’s church, the
Epiphany Cathedral, had become linked with a local hospital. An agreement had
been signed providing the opportunity for church members to offer volunteer service.

“The Christian
religion teaches care of neighbor,” said Doctor Anatoly Soloviev, the
hospital’s director. “This is a concrete way of doing it. Now we have our
first contact with a religious group. We think it can help with problems we
have offering health care. Some of the patients need constant care, and we
don’t have the staff to offer that. The feeling you get from believers is
compassion. Patients need that. They need the support of faith and love.”

The interviewer asked
Father Matthew Stadniouk, dean of the Patriarchal Cathedral, what led the
Church to help in this way. “Our Orthodox people are part of
society,” he answered, “and I’m very glad that now the opportunity
has come to help people. It is perestroika and democratization at work.
The time has come for common feeling. It means seeing what you can do today.
Tomorrow may be too late. This work is a moral reward for the people. The way
people respond already shows that the conscience of our people has not been
destroyed. We expect that many in our church will take part. The hospital is
our neighbor. We hope to give help every day. After all, to have any success in
healing you have to have love.”

“If you have a feeling
of mercy in your heart, ” said one of the volunteers at the hospital,
“you will do this.” A priest was shown making the sign of the cross
over a woman too ill even to raise her head. In another room a nurse was
standing next to a frail patient. “Do you feel pushed aside by these
volunteers coming from the church?” the nurse was asked. “Oh
no,” said the nurse, immediately crossing herself, “I am a believer
myself!”

“It is the first
time,” said an astonished Orthodox priest who was watching the news with
me, “that anything like this has happened since Lenin. In the past it has
been said that the state provides social services and needs no help in doing
it. But it is far from true. At most hospitals the nursing staff is much too
small.”

Assisted by a Muscovite
teacher of English, three days later I visited Clinical Hospital Number Six a
few blocks west of the Epiphany Cathedral. We hadn’t been able to get through
by phone so had come in the hope the director might be there and could find the
time for a visitor. Though repair work was underway, the buildings had fallen
into appalling condition: broken doors, cracked or missing glass, faded,
ancient paint. We searched through several buildings surrounding a small park
until we found the appropriate office.

The only decoration in
Anatoly Soloviev’s dimly lit office were side-by-side pictures of Lenin and
Gorbachev. He was a man in his late thirties who six months earlier had been
elected by his colleagues.

I asked how many hospitals
were involved in the volunteer initiative. “This is the only hospital so
far with people coming as volunteers from a local church.”

What sort of volunteers are
coming? “Ordinary people. There is no pay for it and there are no
qualifications needed except the willingness to help.”

He laughed when I asked
about the history of the hospital’s engagement with the local church. “It
is so new that it is hard to say there is any history! We began just ten days
ago during the celebration of the Church’s Millennium. There were talks between
the staff of the church, Father Matthew and Father Nicholas, and the chief
doctors of the hospital. Then it was announced at the Cathedral during morning
prayer June 8 that we would welcome volunteers. The first one to show up was a
man named Sergei Leonidovitch Timofeev. Then came a nun, Mother Marianelle, who
brought a group of believers with her. We can say these people are the
founders. So far, except Sergei, they are all women. They come when they have
time. There’s no schedule.”

What do they do? “They
clean wards, change linens, take care of bed pans, talk to the patients, sit
with them, read the newspaper or a book aloud. They make contact with the
believers among the patients and, in case the patients ask, they invite a
priest to bring the sacraments or to come and pray for them.”

How is it going? “We
are happy about it. We see how much it means to the patients, and it is good
for the staff also. One of the patients, an old man who has had five heart
attacks, asked if he can give his money to the hospital to help others. This is
something we never heard from a patient before. You see, you are watching the
very beginning. We don’t know where it will lead. I have no prognosis. But I
have hope. We are in a new period of our history, we are starting a new life.
Both the clergy and the doctors have hopes that this will develop. From our
side, we are ready to do our best. But we have no experience in it and are
learning as we go.”

What sort of response are
you getting from higher up? “All the responses are positive. I want to
believe, in fact I am almost sure, that the church is going to play a big role
in health care work in this country. It is time. The Millennium is a good time
to start. We have many believing people in our country. It is good that they
play the part they deserve to play.”

He asked if there were
pastors in legislative roles in the United States. I said there were. “I
hope,” he responded, “to see the day when priests will become
People’s Deputies. They are also Soviet people. They are close to the people.
It may seem like a crazy idea but I would like to suggest that Father Matthew
should be a People’s Deputy. He has the life experience. He is honest. He is a
helpful man. He is qualified. We need people like that helping to lead our
country.”

The next day I went to the
Patriarchal residence near Arbat Street to meet Father Matthew Stadniouk. His
desk was covered with papers and books and there were several icons on the
wall. He had a short white beard and a shy manner.

“Our Russian word for
such acts of care is miloserdia — works of a merciful heart,” he
said. “It means any action done for others out of Christ’s love. In her
long history the Church was always taking care of people. There is nothing new
in the task, but the possibility in our situation is new. We are just starting
to put seeds in the ground. It is too early to say what will come from them.
But the Church should do whatever she can, that is the thing, especially for
those who are sick and need our help. We hope that the possibilities to do this
will improve, especially now that we have a good relationship with the
government. As you know, perestroika is going on. But this renewal of
structures comes from dukhovnost — the spiritual life of the people.
Our country and every country need dukhovnost. In fact I think America
needs it even more than we do. Dukhovnost is the reason the Church
survived so many centuries. We should thank God.”

How are members of the
congregation responding? “One person asked whether it was more important
to go to the church for services or to go to the hospital to volunteer. Well,
normally we don’t have to choose between one and the other, but I said
sometimes it may be more important to go to the hospital. Sometimes the needs
there may be the most urgent. We have 300,000 people living in our area.”

Was he surprised at this
new opening in society? “No, not that it happens, only I did not know when
it would happen. It is something I expected sooner or later. The government
knows that the Church has always been with the people. We have lived with them,
suffered with them, shared their fate, never abandoned them, and we are always
ready to serve in whatever ways we can.”

What did he think would
happen next? “I can’t say. God is giving us such help. All we can do is
thank God and pray that this new atmosphere will last for the next thousand
years. Now we should try to show our people, not only here but in other
countries, that the next Jubilee, the Second Millennium of Christianity, will
be in peace and love and mercy and understanding.”

In the short time we were
together, Father Matthew spoke repeatedly of gratitude: “We are grateful.
. . .We should gives thanks. . . . Thanks be to God! . . . We should say thanks
to God!” It was his deep gratitude that I felt even more than his words.
He is a man with a radiant face. That such a person shares the Patriarch’s home
and serves as pastor of patriarchal cathedral provides significant clues to the
character of Patriarch Pimen himself.

When leaving, I gave him a
copy of a biography I had written of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic
Worker movement, whose houses of hospitality in the United States have been a
place of welcome for so many abandoned people. He was amazed. “Dorothy
Day! Did you know her?” I said I had worked with her on the Catholic
Worker staff in the early sixties and that it was she who first brought me to
visit a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the church on East 97th Street in New York.
“We have met before! I remember you when you were a young man!” said
Father Matthew. “I was serving in that church. Dorothy used to visit me,
and I once went to the Catholic Worker farm. I remember her bringing you to our
church.”

“I believe,” said
Father Matthew, “that there are no accidental meetings. Please come and
see me again when you return to Moscow.”

Six months later, in
January 1989, we met again in an office tucked into the rafters of the Epiphany
Cathedral. A Christmas tree stood in the middle of the office, a battered couch
to one side, a small wooden desk to the other. While Father Matthew prepared
tea, I studied the photos over his desk. One was of the Savior Cathedral, the
church near the Kremlin that was dynamited in 1931. After the tea was served in
cups of various sizes and colors, I asked how the miloserdia was coming.

“More parishes are
involved, more volunteers, more patients. Similar work is being done by other
churches in Moscow and Leningrad and we anticipate it will develop quickly
throughout the country. We have just established the Federated Society of
Charities. Next we will set up the Moscow Society of Charities. So there has
been much progress.”

What about new churches in
Moscow? “One week ago a church building was returned to us and two months
ago we received one located in the north of the city near the Sheremetyevo
Airport. In the near future we will build a cathedral in southern Moscow
dedicated to the Holy Trinity, with a second altar dedicated to the Holy Saints
of Russia. The ground was blessed during the Millennium. Little by little, the
needs of believers are being met.”

Isn’t it hard to find
people with the skills needed for church construction? “We want the church
to be built in a traditional way so of course there will be problems. It will
not be easy to find the builders. Yet we notice that in earlier centuries
people had no education but they made beautiful churches. In the whole of
Russia we hope to find both the people and resources needed.”

Can the Church could afford
to put back into service so many buildings in derelict condition? “Money
is a big problem. Restoration costs a lot. It is not easy to do so much at the
same time. We are now restoring many churches and also two monasteries. But we
know our people will give whatever is needed, even everything they have. We
find support from many people not belonging to the Church. During the Jubilee a
good atmosphere was created throughout society. Many writers and scientists
wrote good articles about church history — what the Church has done for the
country. They also wrote about the importance of the art and architecture that
has been created by believers. There has been much on television and in the
press, and this didn’t stop with the end of the Jubilee year. It is still going
on. We feel the respect and affection of our neighbors. It is amazing how
things can change so quickly! I thank God.”

Is the climate still
positive? “God sent us Mister Gorbachev to give good leadership to our
country and now many things are possible. We thank God that we have been given
the right man. The atmosphere in society is very good. We pray and the whole country
prays that perestroika will continue. It helps us and it helps the whole
world. Your country and my country no longer criticize each other so much.
Neither country is trying to be the judge of the whole world. This is as it
should be for no one gave us such a right. What we have been given is the right
to help each other.”

Our conversation turned to
the subject of forgiveness. “Forgiveness is based on Jesus’ saying, ‘If
you are going to pray and you remember that you have a dispute with your neighbor,
leave the gift at the altar, go and make peace with your neighbor, and then
return.’ The Apostle John says that, ‘Whoever says he loves God but hates his
brother is a liar.’ You know in Russia we have the tradition of Forgiveness
Sunday just before the beginning of Great Lent. This is a day when all people
go to the church and forgive each other. Of course you cannot forgive everyone
in one day but you can make a beginning that goes on throughout Lent. Everyone
understands that when you go to the Holy Chalice you must have forgiven
everyone from your heart. To live in Christ is to forgive. But this is very
hard sometimes. To forgive is not easy. If someone killed your brother it is
not easy to forgive the killer. We have to take the example of our Savior who
said, ‘Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.’

“Forgiveness is at the
heart of the transformation happening in our country. This rejuvenation is
impossible without forgiveness. Perestroika cannot happen by itself,
without a spiritual life. Just one man can do much evil. We know from our
history how much evil one man can do. With one small match you can burn down a
big building. But with the light of forgiveness you can do even more. With
spiritual fire you can heal.

“I think everywhere in
the world people are realizing the need to find some solution to the crisis we
are facing and they see the answer isn’t some machine. People are asking: Where
are we going? Does this direction not lead to destruction? They come more and
more to the Church to find an inner direction, and also to find the inspiration
to forgive. But of course still there are people who think you are crazy if you
speak about forgiveness, people who think humility is a very old fashioned
word. Yes, there are still many people thinking like that.”

Kiev

Sharing our compartment on
the night train to Kiev was a babushka named Olga on her way home after a
Christmas visit with one of her sons and his family in Moscow. “They
almost killed me with food,” she said, “and then they gave me this
big bag of food to take on the train. You have to help eat it, please. All that
God gives is blessed.” She crossed herself and opened the bag. “So
you’re welcome!” We ate brown bread, hard-boiled eggs, bologna and cookies.

Christmas in Moscow didn’t
please her. “Young people don’t know what Christmas is. There used to be a
real Christmas. Now it hardly exists. There was no feeling of Christmas in
Moscow. In our town, we still have it but not as it used to be. We have two
churches in our town, one Orthodox, one Catholic. I am Orthodox.”

She talked about her three
sons and their families. “My sons are good to me, and their wives. Praise
be to God!” She crossed herself.

I was the first American
she had ever met. “It’s good that it is going better between America and
our country. Our children should never know what we had to know.” She
crossed herself. “I pray for peace and friendship.”

While Olga got ready for
bed, Sergei and I went out into the corridor. “She is a true
babushka,” said Sergei, “the real thing. She is what we miss so much
in our lives. The babushka created the soul of Lermontov and Pushkin. She is so
plain but she has her special beauty. We have the proverb, ‘Of course we are
astonished by the beauty of a beautiful woman, but our heart belongs to a nice
woman.’ Real beauty comes from inner goodness.”

Arriving at Metropolitan
Filaret’s three-storey house on Pushkin Street, we found a crowd of people —
among them several women who reminded me of Olga — gathered in the back yard,
lined up to receive Bibles that were being distributed inside.

Apart from his neatly
trimmed snow white beard, Metropolitan Filaret has a child’s face — pink,
hardly lined, with clear, expectant eyes. Neither while presiding at the
Liturgy nor in private conversation does he ever seem in a hurry.

He opened the interview
with a general overview of the current situation of the Russian Orthodox
Church. “We have got to have changes in the life of the Russian Orthodox
Church, changes linked with the general changes in our society, glasnost and
perestroika. When Mikhail Gorbachev received the Patriarch and members
of the Holy Synod last April 29, he told us that perestroika concerns
everything, including the Church.

“Speaking about how it
is manifested for believers, I would point first of all to the Millennium last
year. This event was celebrated not only by believers but by everyone. For
non-believers it was a celebration of national identity and culture. It showed
that the wall between church and state is being erased. Churches that were
closed are being opened, new churches are under construction. In the past year
we registered over 800 new Orthodox communities, 420 of these in the Ukraine.
There are many new churches serving other religious communities have also
opened — Catholic, Baptist, Adventist, Armenian, also Jewish synagogues,
Moslem mosques and Buddhist temples. The weather is good for everyone.

“Part of the Monastery
of the Caves has been returned. Please go and visit the monks living there. Now
there are eleven monasteries on Ukrainian territory, four for men and seven for
women, and we expect the return of the Holy Trinity Monastery at Chernigov. In
Russia the Optina Pustyn Monastery and the Tolga Convent are being restored and
we anticipate the return of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Kolomna [40 miles
from Moscow] and the Gethsemane Monastery near Zagorsk. We are discussing the
return of the Valaam Monastery in Karelia [near the Finnish border] and another
monastery in the Ryazan region. We will have the chance to re-open still other
monasteries in the near future. The problem is staff, finances, and the
extensive restoration work that needs to be done.

“We have three
seminaries with approximately 2500 resident students at Zagorsk, Leningrad and
Odessa. Now we plan to open seminaries in the Ukraine and Byelorussia and
another either in Siberia or the Volga River region. Possibly there will be one
in Moscow. The Ukrainian one will be in Kiev. We also plan to open theological
schools in Minsk, Smolensk and in Chernigov in the Ukraine to train psalm
singers, readers and other church staff.

“We still have the
problem of providing faithful people with Bibles. You saw the line of people
waiting for a copy. Many Bibles were given to us by the Scandinavian churches,
others from the Bible Society in Great Britain. The Ukrainian Exarchate has
also published a Ukrainian edition. A Russian prayer book is being distributed
and we plan a Ukrainian edition. The publishing activity of the church is
rapidly expanding. We plan to open a church publishing house. The most serious
problem we face is the shortage of paper. We are hoping that publishers and
churches in other countries will help us with paper. If we had the paper we
could issue a short presentation of our faith, for example, a church history
and other much needed publications and books.

“Fortunately we now
have the opportunity to participate in the mass media. Radio and television
programs are broadcast about church life. Orthodox people are being interviewed
and also being invited to participate in discussion programs.

“Church workers are
active at all levels in many public organizations — the Cultural Fund, the
Children’s Fund, the Peace Fund, and so forth. Now we have launched a structure
for charity work around the country. The Church is ready to collaborate with
any civic organizations. Again there are still problems to be solved, however.
We still have old-fashioned laws limiting the activities of the Church, but
step by step the barriers are being removed. We are expecting a new law for
religion in the new future. The separation of church and state will remain as
well as the separation of church and school, but we expect that faithful people
will be allowed the right to fully participate in social life. We hope the
draft of this new law will be openly discussed. By all means the church will
present it opinions about the law.

“Society is expecting
the Church to play her part in the moral and spiritual education of the people
and this is the mission and longing of the Church. In the past religious
education took place within the family and at church. We would like to address
ourselves to the wider character of religious education in the life of this
people. We don’t want to impose religious instruction at school but we look for
other ways to meet this need, perhaps by providing the opportunity for private
religious education. We don’t yet know how this will work. It is under
discussion.

“There is also the
Church’s peacemaking work. This is worldwide and it will continue.

“Another important
development is that religious workers have the chance to be elected to Soviet
legislative bodies. Religious workers have been nominated by several public
organizations. The Holy Synod discussed this opportunity at its recent session
and gave its blessing to church workers to participate in the legislature. The
Patriarch and Holy Synod hope that this will be beneficial to the people, the
state and the Church.

“Another point: You
know about the process of rehabilitation now going on of people killed unjustly
in purges in the Stalin period. The Holy Synod, at its meeting December 28,
decided to set up a committee to collect material about those who perished, who
were repressed or who suffered in that period.”

The interview continued
over lunch — fish in jelly, kvass, lemon flavored vodka, caviar, bread and
butter — prepared by a sister from the Pokrovsky Convent.

I mentioned the criticism
Konstantin Kharchev had made in Ogonyok magazine about the resistance of
local Councils for Religious Affairs to the new direction taken by the Council
in Moscow. “He is right. Some local authorities are still resisting the
registration of local religious communities. Often the authorities do not want
to return old churches that are being destroyed by the weather or being used
for secular purposes. When faithful people want to take over a church, it
should be given to them. This would be good both for believers and society. The
church would be used once again for the purpose for which it was built and at
the same time a cultural landmark would be restored.”

I asked how money for
church restoration is being raised. “We are collecting money to build the
new cathedral in Moscow. Partly this money comes from the sale of Bibles. While
we give some away free we also sell them in order to raise money for the new
church. For example they are on sale at the cathedral here in Kiev. We would
welcome any help that churches in the west can offer. We are trying to raise
money to rebuilt the Assumption Cathedral and to restore the Pokrovsky and
Florensky Monasteries here in Kiev. The Dormition Cathedral at the Monastery of
the Caves was blown up by the Nazis in the war. We want it to be a place both
for divine services and to serve as a cultural landmark for tourists to visit.
We will also restore the Holy Intercession Krasnogorsky Convent in
Zolotonosha.”

What about the church’s new
opportunities for social service? “Now believing people are able to found
charitable societies. This is a welcome development. We see a difference
between civil charity and charity in response to the Gospel. Our faith stresses
the importance of charity in the heart. In the Gospel story about the woman who
gave two kopeks, the reason her small gift was more precious to God was that it
came from her heart. Orthodoxy tries to cultivate the heart and this deep
feeling of charity.”

What about the prospect for
improved relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and Ukrainian Catholics?
“This problem has been exaggerated. Those campaigning for legalization are
a small group driven more by political than religious interests. Their method
is not peaceful but aggressive. Under such circumstances how can relations be
improved?”

The conversation turned to
the approach the Orthodox Church has to confession, repentance and forgiveness.
“Orthodoxy emphasizes careful preparation for communion — prayer,
repentance, forgiveness of others, confession, fasting. We understand
repentance to be a rebirth that comes from deep within. The violent person who
confesses must end his violence, the drunkard should stop drinking. What you
confess you should stop doing. Repentance means a process of renovating your
whole life.”

I asked what he saw as
special characteristics of Orthodoxy. “More than churches in the west,
which seem to deal more with civic issues, we concentrate on religious and
spiritual issues. We also put special stress on love of enemies. Consider those
who suffered under Stalin’s purges. You can easily have a feeling for revenge.
Many of those who were responsible are still alive yet in the Orthodox Church
you hear no one calling for revenge. Also many suffered terribly from the
Germans. We suffered very much in the Ukraine. Yet you do not find longing for
revenge. I have been told by German visitors that they feel more welcomed here
than in any part of Europe that was occupied by the German army.”

He talked about the
religious programs on Soviet television. “One of the most important was
the film ‘Church.’ Its basic message was that the destruction of places of
worship is the destruction of everything that is holy, the loss of a sense of
the sacred. You recall the scene where some young people are riding their
motorbikes through a graveyard around a church that has been made into
nightclub. There is a lot of noisy dancing inside. This is contrasted in the
film with the beauty of church singing. In the Orthodox Church, when you have
committed a sin, you must repent before you can improve yourself. The film
shows the evil that has been done — the violence against believers and the
desecration of places of worship. We can see the film as itself a confession,
an act of repentance, a plea for renewal of the soul. The public disclosure of
your evil actions is a sign of repentance. It is a way of saying that we don’t
want to be this way anymore.”

For Vespers Sergei and I
went to Saint Vladimir’s Cathedral. A large church of the Byzantine style built
in the last century, it is one of the most ravishing churches in Russia. In a
religious goods shop in back, in addition to inexpensive crosses and
silk-screened icons, the Bible was on sale for 80 rubles. Hand-painted icons
were 300 rubles.

The Dean of the Cathedral,
Father John Chernienko, was eager to show the iconography covering the
cathedral walls, much of it the work of Victor Vasnetsov. “He had a
wonderful gift to reveal holiness,” said Father John. Just within the main
entrance, we looked at a Vasnetsov fresco of Prince Vladimir’s baptism. On the
facing wall was a painting of the people of Kiev being baptized in the Dnieper
River.

“The cathedral is
named for Saint Vladimir, whom we call Equal to the Apostles because he led our
people to Baptism,” said Father John. “In an old manuscript it says
Prince Vladimir was blinded but in baptism his eyes were re-opened. You get
this impression in the way Vasnetsov shows Vladimir’s face as he comes out of
the baptismal water. He has an expression of profound wonder. He is looking at
the world with new eyes. But notice that some of the people standing around
watching the baptism have very old eyes — some of his warriors are clearly
displeased at what their prince is doing.”

As Father John’s talked, a
crowd gathered to listen. “Christianity was not new to Kiev but many had
opposed it. There had been baptized people in Kiev for generations. There was
already the Church of Saint Elijah. Among the prominent people who converted to
the new faith was Princess Olga, grandmother of Vladimir. But it was because of
the conversion of Vladimir that Christianity became the state religion. In the
painting of the baptism of the Kievan people, you can see that while the mass
of people are accepting baptism with joy, some are displeased. You can see that
our people are only at the beginning of the process of conversion.”

Over the entrance doors,
between the two baptismal paintings, was a fresco of the Last Judgment, a work
in which the crack of doom is almost audible. “If you look at the details,
you can sense Vasnetsov’s theological depth. He almost graduated from a
seminary before taking the path of art.” By now the crowd around us was
large and pressing hard. “The Last Judgment is a mystical subject — not
historical in the sense of the other two but the portrayal of an event we await
rather than one we remember. Any sensitive viewer can penetrate the church’s
theology by looking at it. You see Christ in the center. He is holding the
Gospel. This means he will judge us by the law of the Gospel. You see Mary’s
head almost touching his — the halos are touching. There are tears in her
eyes. She is pleading for mercy. You also see John the Baptist making appeals.
The condemned are those who failed to maintain the moral level they were called
to — people who committed actions against conscience. There is the Archangel.
What strict and just beauty! He is holding the scroll with the seven seals
described in the Book of Revelations of Saint John. Its text is the history of
the world and what each has done or failed to do. There is the scale. You can
see among the condemned many who were supposed to be leading others to
salvation — notice the priest tearing his clerical garments. And there is a
king — you see him grabbing for his crown as it falls from his head. The
painting says that salvation cannot be bought by money or authority or
ecclesiastical vocation. Your clothes and titles do not excuse you from living
a moral life. You also see in the painting the strength of prayer. There is one
woman falling toward hell. But you see she is being rescued from damnation by
the intercession of someone praying for her. You see in this painting that
nothing disappears. The same God who made you from nothing will reform your
body at the end of history even if there is nothing left of your body but ash
scattered across a desert. You will be raised from death, body and soul, and be
held responsible for how you lived.”

Later, away from the crowd,
I asked Father John if the cathedral had managed to stay open through the
Stalin years. “It was closed from 1931 to 1941, but since that time it has
been a working church. It has served not only the needs of believers but people
coming to belief. Many visitors come in just to look and begin to discover the
treasures of faith. Sometimes we have an entire family to baptize. Through art,
architecture and music, through the witness of our Liturgy, the hearts of many
people, especially young people, have been opened. In this church many people
have committed themselves to goodness.”

Was perestroika having
a positive effect? “We are feeling it. It gives our people the chance to
live in conformity with our conscience. Believers are supporting the process in
every way. We only want it to go faster.”

Back at the hotel, I gave a
Bible I had been presented with that morning to a cleaning woman. She took it
in her hands and kissed it.

At the Liturgy the next
morning in the lower church at the Pokrovsky (Protection of the Mother of God)
Convent, Father Timothy Shaidurov’s sermon occasioned a vocal response.
“Are you going to consent to a life of materialism?” Several people
said, “Nyet!” “Are you going to be careless about prayer?”
“Nyet!” Blessing the faithful at the end of the Liturgy, he
affectionately tapped some of them on the forehead with the bronze cross in his
hand.

Afterward the abbess,
Matushka (Mother) Margarita, took us into the upper church, a building
consecrated in 1911, now restored except for its missing cupola. “Not so
many people were at the Liturgy today,” she said. “They are tired
after being in church so much during the last two weeks. During the Christmas
celebration, there were real crowds. Our four priests and one deacon were kept
busy.”

She paused in front of an
icon of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. “He inspires much devotion. He showed
that it was possible to lead a life of constant prayer while loving and serving
all those around him. He devoted his life to repentance in such a way that many
ascended to God. Such a saint attracts God by the absence of pride in his
heart. His eyes are opened and he can see what others fail to see. He can see
the thoughts and souls of others. This power is given to him by God. He does
not need a car or tram to go somewhere. He can go anywhere without taking a
single step. Other people travel a lot but see nothing. To travel is not
necessarily to see. The great saints labored hard in the spirit — it is hard
to overcome yourself! — and God gave them eyes that were truly open. God gave
them a sanctified life. This was God’s gift. We come to live in the convent in the
hope of obtaining just a spark of such grace. We will not be great saints but
perhaps we can have a spark of the fire of sanctity. This is what we seek. Just
a spark. We may not be great saints but we want at least not to fall into hell.
Our will isn’t strong but we rely on Christ.” She crossed herself.
“He is our hope. He was incarnated into a man’s body. He was crucified. He
saved us from eternal death. He gave us the spark of longing for eternal life
and made us want to pray and to work and to live a tender life.”

Over tea in the convent,
she told me that fifteen nuns had joined the community since my last visit at
Easter in 1987. “One sister dies, another arrives. We have 82 in our
community now.” I wondered if the sisters are all Ukrainian. “No, also
Russian, Moldavians and others. All nations are here.”

We talked about the
convent’s history. Founded in 1889 by Grand Princess Alexandra Petrovna, who
was called Sister Anastasia in the convent, the community stressed charity work
from the beginning. The nuns opened a school for blind girls, an orphanage, and
a hospital with a free out-patient department. The convent was closed by the
Soviet government in the late twenties and reopened in 1941 during the German
occupation, though a smaller, older church remains closed. Damage to the
buildings in the years of persecution included removal of the larger church’s
cupola, once a landmark of Kiev.

“While the worst
things are in the past, still we face obstacles,” said Father Timothy.
“We have asked permission to rebuild the cupola and to reopen the original
church of this community but so far there is no answer to our letter. Also we
hope someday to be able to do more of the charity work that Matushka Anastasia
intended when she founded the convent. Of course the sisters have never ceased,
no matter what circumstances, to live a life of mercy and charity.” He
talked about what the nuns had done during the war, opening a scrap book to
show a photo of a nun caring for injured soldiers. “Today some of the
sisters work in the Kiev hospitals.”

I asked if there were other
current difficulties. “The sisters would like to re-open a building which
was taken away in the twenties and now used as a government office
building,” Father Timothy responded. “There are several agencies here
on the territory of the convent — the Society for Planting Trees, for example.
Also the local authorities have constructed some garages on the convent
grounds. We feel besieged by inappropriate structures and would like to see
them moved to a more suitable location. The idea of monastic life is to
maintain some degree of isolation. We see what the authorities have done in the
past as an injustice and we would like to put things right. So you see we have
faced and still face hardships, a lot of labor and pain. Despite all our
difficulties we survived, thanks be to God! But it was a hard life.”

“There is a new
climate now,” said Matushka Margarita. “We are getting more letters
than ever from people who want to lead a more faithful life. People not only
write to us but to the Council for Religious Affairs saying they want to be
monks and nuns. But we still have trouble to get the necessary city residence
permits for those we are willing to accept into community. Konstantin Kharchev
has publicly spoken about the problem of red tape, all the artificial problems
created by bureaucracy. It’s true. Our sisters have to spend hundreds of hours
to get residence permits. You face all these useless walls! You can smash your
head on them. We see that the government is trying to fight the problem and has
ordered big cuts in bureaucracy, but the functionaries try to escape the
reductions. They move people whose job is only red tape from one section to
another and the red tape survives.”

I asked about community
life. “To be in such a community,” said Matushka Margarita, “you
need to love prayer and the Liturgy and be willing to get up early. There is
morning prayer at five a.m. and Liturgy at seven. On feast days there is a
second Liturgy at ten. We often have very large crowds. Orthodox people are
praying people! On feast days the Liturgy lasts three or four hours, longer
than in a normal parish because we do everything, and take a little more time.
Vespers begins at five and lasts until about eight-thirty. At eleven or twelve
we go to bed, but not everyone. Some sisters are praying in turn around the
clock.

“There is a lot of
work to do. We have orchards, gardens, the kitchen. Some take care of the sick.
We have twenty sisters in need of care. We have a sewing workshop where we make
clothing and liturgical garments. We send some sisters to work in local
hospitals. And we have guests, many guests — sometimes five, sometimes a
hundred — and so we have sisters doing hospitality work. Some of our sisters
are caring for the residence of Metropolitan Filaret. Here at the convent there
is cleaning to be done, and restoration work. All the art and decoration that
you saw in the church is the work of our sisters.

“I think for
non-believers it seems very odd that we live this way, but for us it is
logical. Our life is centered on prayer. We believe that to pray for someone is
important. We believe if a person’s name is mentioned in prayer, that prayer
will ascend to our Lord. If we remember a dead soul, we believe our Lord will
hear our prayer and respond. Our Lord teaches us, ‘Pray for each other.’ And he
said, ‘You will have what you ask for in prayer.’ Our Lord gave us ears. We are
sure that he hears what we ask him. He gave us a heart. We are sure that he
feels what we pray for.”

“At the Liturgy,”
said Father Timothy, “we pray for many people, living and dead. With each
name, we put a small piece of prosphora [bread specially made for use at
the altar] in the chalice, asking God to forgive the person named. The Holy
Liturgy is at the very center of life. Our Lord said, ‘Eat my body, drink my
blood, and you will have eternal life.’ During the great feasts, thousands of
people receive communion here. We hear thousands of confessions. People come to
us with their tortured consciences, seeking forgiveness. To forgive and be
forgiven is part of communion. Before we receive the body and blood of our
Lord, we purify ourselves with confession and fasting.”

Father Timothy told the
story of a certain person who walked to the Pochayev Monastery in the western
Ukraine to bring back some water from a healing spring for a Jewish friend who
had an eye disease.

“The Mother of God
once appeared at this place and caused a spring to flow from the stone where
she was standing. Its water is associated with many miracles. But it was a hot
day. On the way back the woman became so thirsty she drank the water she was
carrying and then put water from the tap into the bottle when she got home. She
gave this water to her sick neighbor. The neighbor believed it came from the
special spring and her eyes were healed! Faith is what is important. All water
is holy water if you have faith. But faith is not just what you think. It is
what you do. Faith is linked with deeds. Read the scripture. Follow the
regulations of Christian life. Faith is encouraged by good deeds.”

“It isn’t enough to
believe in God,” said Matushka Margarita. “The devil knows God
exists. You have to live according to the commandments of God. You should
believe and act with goodness, and also without pride. If we have pride in our
good deeds, they are useless. The effect disappears. You must know that good
deeds come to us from God. Our hands are used by God. There is a story from the
early years of Christianity about Saint Anthony of the Desert. A devil came to
him and said, ‘You fast often but I fast always. You sleep little but I never
sleep. Still you are victorious over me. How do you do it?’ ‘Because I am
meek,’ Saint Anthony said. We need meekness. With meekness, any ordinary person
can be accepted into the Kingdom of God. A Christian never abandons respect for
science or loses interest in reading, but heaven is not only for the clever.
Anthony of the Desert was asked by some philosophers, ‘You are illiterate and
we read a lot but your name is on every tongue. Why?’ ‘Which came first,”
the saint asked, “science or mind?’ The philosophers said, ‘Mind.’ Anthony
said, ‘If I have mind, what need have I for science?’

“This is not to
criticize science,” said Father Timothy, “but it is clear that
science without faith brings destruction. Perhaps it is because of all the
destruction caused by science that today many scientists are turning back
toward faith. They begin to see that there is a divine force ruling
creation.”

Before my departure I was
able to talk with three nuns in the community, Sisters Anne, Nina and Tatiana.

I asked Sister Anne
Rudenko, the oldest, what had brought her to the convent. “Faith! Faith in
God! Love towards God!”

How long have you been
here? “Thirty years.”

How did you choose this
community. “My father brought me to visit when I was a child. I liked the
services. I always wanted to live here.”

What are you doing in your
work? “I help clean the church but I am glad to do anything that is
needed.”

Sister Nina, a young woman
with a round face and large dark eyes, was still a novice. She told me she also
came from a family of believers. “My mother sang in the choir so I was in
church a lot. I fell in love with singing! I am Ukrainian. We Ukrainians have a
deep, ancient tradition of singing. When I grew up I became interested in
monasticism. I began visiting different convents, studying details. First I
went to the Pochayev Monastery. This was where my interest in monasticism
started. Then I went to the Krasnagorsky Convent. When I met the sisters of
that community I felt love in my heart. But this one was my favorite. I loved
everything about this convent — the way ritual was done, the choir singing. I
was accepted here and then I was sent to Leningrad to learn choral direction at
the Choral School at the Theological Academy. Now my main work is our
choir.”

The youngest was Sister
Tatiana, 25. “My parents were deeply believing people interested in
Christian spirituality and tradition. Because of them I also came to love the
church. My being here is really thanks to them. Since childhood I had a feeling
in my heart of wanting to devote my life to God. Coming here was a response to
my soul’s longing.”

In an old building near the
city center, we stopped to talk with Boris Ilyich Oleinik, a much loved
Ukrainian poet who is now chairman of the Ukrainian Culture Foundation.
“Personally, I am Orthodox. As I see it, the Orthodox Church always tried
to cultivate enlightenment,” he said. “In all these years, the Church
was one of the few forces in society never to waver. It has passed through many
adversities still bearing the soul of our culture.”

The Foundation was set up
in 1987 to protect architecture, art, music and literature and is, he said,
“not only very democratic but is among those groups working to revive the
nation’s spirituality.”

“The highest
sensibility is in the spirit,” he continued. “Both the artist and the
Church are preoccupied with the soul. Look at the writing of Dostoyevsky and
his attention to the interior man. His goal was beauty, the spiritual
perfection of the human being. The road of religion and literature converges in
his writing. You see this also in our Ukrainian author, Gogol. He was a devout
Orthodox believer. It was Gogol who caused a thaw in Russian literature. The
Russian language was bookish while Ukrainian speech was rooted in folk
language. I don’t want to insult the Russian language but it was a little cold
and heavy. Gogol helped to warm it up. After Gogol, the Gulf Stream flowed into
the Russian language.”

Arriving at the Monastery
of the Caves the next day, I was impressed with how much had been transformed
since my first visit two years earlier. In 1987 many of the buildings on the
“far hill,” the part since returned to the Church, were almost
derelict. The renewal of monastic life on these hilltops above the Dnieper
seemed a distant dream. Now they were either fully restored or the restoration
was well underway.

We were met by the vicar of
the monastery. Archimandrite Jonathan Eletskih was tall, young, energetic, and
very dashing in his flowing black robes. I recalled the vast crowd that had
been at the monastery for its first Liturgy the previous June. “We had
many outdoor Liturgies after that and want to have more,” said Father
Jonathan, “to make it a tradition. Anyway for major feasts it is
impossible to fit all those who come within the church. We also like it because
it means good contact between clergy and people.” He regretted that I
hadn’t been at the monastery for Christmas. “There was a nativity play in
the courtyard. It was the first time. Formerly religious plays were forbidden.
Next Christmas we hope to perform the play all around the city.”

He was proud of the repairs
so far accomplished. “You saw how these building were last year.
Everything was falling down. Look how it is now! We have still a lot to do but
already you can see the difference. Come back next Easter and see what it’s
like then!”

The change was impressive.
Despite scaffolding, the area returned to the monks had a new-born quality.
What had been dull or rotting when I first saw it was now shining. “If you
tried to do something like this under a state plan,” he said, “it
would take at least three years, but we have religious enthusiasm on our side
and that’s a big factor.”

He showed us a newly
restored church. “It is dedicated to the Mother of God. It was a museum
for more than a quarter century. The restorers were the same ones who restored
the czar’s palace at Pushkin near Leningrad. The icons have been given to us by
faithful people who were saving them until the monastery was brought back to
life. They are real treasures. We consider some of them miracle-working icons
— they are linked with specific miraculous events. In hard times they had to
be hidden. There are other icons that should be returned but are still in
museums, but we believe that just as God has returned part of this monastery,
in time icons will be returned to their rightful places.”

I asked about the condition
of the caves. “We have much work to do there as well but the chapels are
now used for services and the bodies of the saints are no longer tourist
curiosities but places of prayer. Also we have even experienced what we
consider a miraculous sign. There are several skulls that were formerly dry
bone and are now continuously exuding a myrrh-like oil. You will see it
yourself. To protect the monastery from the charge of falsification, I had the
oil tested. Scientists found a high percentage of protein, 72 percent. They
have no explanation for how this can happen. We accept it as a miracle. A
lifeless skull is giving birth to a living substance. It is a holy event, an
action of the Lord, a blessing for a monastic community that has been restored
to life.”

Father Jonathan led us up a
staircase. “Before you go into the caves, I want you to see our pilgrim
church.” He pointed to bedding piled up along the walls. “Not only is
this a place for worship but a place for pilgrims to sleep, although in fact
many of them pray more than sleep at night. But it is too small. When the
restoration gets further and other churches are restored, we plan for this room
to be a refectory.”

He pointed to an icon of a
bishop. “This is the image of Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev who was killed
by a member of the Anarchist Party in 1918. We are permitted to venerate his
memory in this church. He is one of the New Martyrs [martyrs of the Soviet
period] already regarded as a saint by Orthodox of the Synodal Church [Russian
Orthodox believers outside of the Soviet Union who have no bond with the
Patriarch in Moscow]. Please let them know that we have this icon here. The
proposal that he should be canonized is under consideration, as is true for
others who gave witness to their faith with their lives. This is a manifestation
of the deep change going on in our country.”

I asked if he expected the
rest of the monastery to be returned. “We are optimists! We are waiting
for the second perestroika when the rest of the monastery will be
returned. But until then we have a lot to keep us busy.”

With the arrival of another
guest, Father Jonathan put us in the care of a younger monk who led us into the
caves, the final resting place for the bodies of 116 canonized saints plus
thousands of other who took monastic vows.

The last time I entered
those narrow, damp passages deep within the hill above the Dnieper River, they
were lit by electric lights installed after the monks were evicted. The light
fixtures remain but have been switched off. One hand holding a candle, the other
the thin railing, I made my cautious way downward step by step.

In 1987 a museum guide
passed by the bodies of saints like someone avoiding beggars on a city street.
Her bored voice reverberated in the caves. Today we were engulfed in silence.

The bodies of the saints
lay in glass-topped coffins. Their mummified hands are all that was visible of
these remarkable ascetics of Kiev who did so much to shape the spirit of Slavic
Orthodoxy. The monk leading the way quietly named them and then gently kissed
the glass above their silk-covered faces.

“Some pilgrims are
overcome by tears,” the monk said. “They start crying and they can’t
stop. They fall down on their knees.”

Carved into the rock was
the Church of Saint Theodosius, named after the monastery’s founder. “This
is a living church again,” the monk said. “We have the Holy Liturgy
here at 7 a.m. every Thursday. Also we have the ceremony here for tonsuring new
monks. Before the revolution there were more than 40 Liturgies a day in the
caves. Only one other place in the world had so many, Mount Athos. Before 1922
there were still twelve a day.”

I entered Saint Theodosius’
narrow, low-ceilinged cell. Touching the rock shelf that had been his bed, I
tried to imagine what it would be like to pray day after day deep in the earth,
truly buried with Christ. “The relics of Saint Theodosius aren’t
here,” the monk said. “We hope to find them when we excavate the Dormition
Cathedral.”

In a cabinet in a small
alcove nearby there were a number of cylindrical glass jars holding skulls.
“These are remains of saints whose names we do not know,” he said.
Several were dark and glistening, partially submerged in an amber oil — a wonder
and blessing to Orthodox believers, a puzzle to scientists, and a source of
revulsion to those for whom the spiritual life ought to be rational, well
ordered, and disembodied.

We venerated the body of
Saint Nestor the Illiterate whose teaching is summed up very simply: “You
will not find the truth in books, only in your heart.”

Kiev’s caves also hold one
of Orthodoxy’s most literate figures, the biographer of Theodosius and author
of The Tale of Bygone Years, Saint Nestor the Chronicler who died in
1113. His body was in the part of the caves that remains a museum.

When we stepped back into
the world above the caves, it was a kind of resurrection from the dead. Perhaps
it was to better celebrate Easter that the Kievan monks spent so much of their
lives hidden in the earth.

Our approach to Irkutsk was
by air, a flight from Tashkent that began with a vista of the Tien Shan range,
China’s border. A thread-thin road disappeared under the snow. The land was
quickly stripped of all trace of a human presence. We were flying over an
eternally frozen ghost world that seemed to have been done in finger paints by
a cosmic child working in dark purple and lavender white. Darkness fell and
with it came a blackness below that more than equalled the night sky.
Occasionally there was a sprinkling of light: a town on the edge of a lake or
river. More provocative were the rare pricks of orange light in a sea of
blackness. What would it be like to live in that kind of vast, fierce solitude?
Are there still hermit monks in the Siberian wilderness? Finally there was the
urban neon glow of Irkutsk and we were on the ground.

The word Irkutsk means
“fast-flowing,” referring to the Angara River, the one body of water
flowing out of Lake Baikal. A wintering camp for fur traders set up in 1652
became a town in 1686. The Irkutsk shield granted that year displays the basis
of its frontier prosperity: a sable in the jaws of a Siberian tiger. In the
mid-Nineteenth Century, gold was found, bringing a new wave of wealth to
Irkutsk, but great suffering too. Many political prisoners spent long years —
often their last years — in the mines. The wealth was so immense that
Irkutsk’s governor plated his carriage wheels with silver and shod his horses
with gold. For “unheard of theft,” he was hanged in 1771 at the order
of Peter the Great. The first school in East Siberia, at the Resurrection
Monastery, was just outside the city. In 1898 the city became linked to Moscow
by the Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Though Irkutsk has become
the industrial, administrative, and educational center for eastern Siberia,
much of the old city remains unspoiled. Log buildings have not only survived
but proved better suited to the Siberian environment than concrete.

In the heart of the city,
on the shore, is the Church of the Savior, now a museum. Built in 1706, it was
Siberia’s first stone structure. Three other museum churches stand near by. Two
were Orthodox: the Church of the Apparition of the Lord and the Church of the
Exaltation of the Cross. A third was Catholic, built by some of the 18,600
Poles exiled to Siberia after the 1863 Polish uprising. The Tikhvin Cathedral
is gone, dynamited in the thirties.

There are only three
working Orthodox churches left in Irkutsk and nineteen in the Irkutsk diocese
— an area bigger than Texas, encompassing 300,000 square miles and 2,500,000
people.

The bishop of the diocese,
Archbishop Chrysostom, has his residence next to the gleaming white Cathedral
of the Holy Sign, originally part of the Znamensky Convent. Two old nuns still
live there though the convent was closed half a century ago.

The Epiphany Liturgy was in
progress when Sergei and I arrived at the Cathedral. With several other late
arrivals, we stood shivering on the church porch. When the Liturgy ended we
were invited into the watchman’s room in the corner of an adjacent building, a
dingy space with a bed in the back that doubled as a couch, a table in front
covered with magazines and newspapers, a hot plate and radio on a small cabinet
near the door, a small icon on the upper back corner. Our host, the watchman,
turned out to be a scholar. Items of reading on the table included recent
issues of Novi Mir [New World], the prestigious Soviet literary journal.
I noticed a Russian-Chinese dictionary. He was interested in herbal medicine
and so was learning Chinese. “Being a watchman is a good job for
scholars,” he said, serving us tea.

Word came that the
Archbishop was waiting.

A 1974 report by the
Council for Religious Affairs identified three categories of bishops in the
Russian Orthodox Church. In the first category were those who “in words
and deeds” demonstrated “not only loyalty but patriotism towards the
socialist state, strictly observing the law on cults and educating the parish
clergy and believers in the same spirit, [and who] realistically understand
that our state is not interested in proclaiming the role of religion . . . and
. . . do not display any particular activeness in extending the influence of
Orthodoxy among the population.” In the second category were those who,
while having “a correct attitude to the laws on cults,” in
“their everyday administrative and ideological activity strive toward
activating servants of the cult and active members of the church [and] stand
for the heightening of the role of the church in personal, family and public
life . . . and select for priestly office young people who are zealous
adherents of Orthodox piety.” Finally there were those who “have made
attempts to evade the laws on cults” and who are “capable of
falsifying the position in their dioceses and the attitude which the organs of
authority have formed towards them” and might even attempt to bribe
officials in order to gain concessions for the church.

In this third category the
report’s author placed Archbishop Chrysostom, at the time Bishop of Kursk.
Shortly after arriving in Kursk, the CRA report said, he had undertaken
“zealous activities to revitalize religious life,” ignoring “the
recommendations of commissioners of the Council and the local
authorities.” He was bold enough to say to his interrogator, “I am a
bishop, I am forty years old. I don’t intend to leave the Church. I’ve heard a
good many insulting and offensive things from atheists, but these are the times
we live in, there’s nothing to be done about it.”[19]

The Archbishop’s office was
impressive for its austerity. A small icon of Mary and Jesus hung over the door
behind his desk. Archbishop Chrysostom was as plain as his office: a thin man
with a long beard and black rosary around his wrist. His beard is just
beginning to grey. The lack of an autocratic quality was striking. An old ink
stand was on the desk, the crystal ink pots empty, a brass woman’s head shining
between them. A jar of pencils and a telephone stood to one side. Resting
against his desk calendar was a post-card icon of the Baptism of Jesus.

Hearing that I had come
into the Russian Orthodox Church from Catholicism, he expressed surprise.
“I was part of a Russian Orthodox delegation that visited Jerusalem in
1966,” he recalled. “Jerusalem is the center of all Christian
churches, and we visited many of them not only in Jerusalem but also in
Nazareth and Bethlehem. I have to say I was shocked by the attitude of the
Greek Orthodox toward other churches. We saw negligence and a lack of purity in
the Greek churchmen — greed and carelessness. Many of them were highly
educated yet they were proud and inaccessible. They showed superiority. This
wasn’t pleasant to observe. Yet when we visited churches in the care of
Catholics, we were pleased. The clergy were also well educated but they weren’t
snobs. The churches were neat and beautifully maintained. I left full of
gratitude for the care Catholics took of these places of pilgrimage. Since then
I am imbued with a deep respect for the Catholic Church. I have now had much
contact with Catholics, all sorts of people of various ranks including members
of the hierarchy. The Catholic Archbishop in Athens was the one who impressed
me most of all — he has a face shining with love, deeply sensitive, generous
to everyone, the kind of pastor that attracts all kinds of people, old and
young.

“In 1974 I met Pope
Paul VI — a small man, very thin, modest, but a man of character, not only
someone of great intellect but with the strength of holiness. Also in Rome I
was impressed by the human diversity of those receiving communion — so many
people and with every color of skin, yellow, black and white. I also liked the
masses for young people. They were playing guitars and singing. The climate was
impressive. I felt the Holy Spirit was present. I was educated in a different
way, but I have come to understand that both churches have spiritual
treasures.”

We moved on in our
discussion to Russian Orthodoxy. “The Russian Orthodox Church has a deep
tradition of iconography. Our Holy Trinity icon by Rublev is now known
throughout the world. And we have a special tradition of church architecture.
When you see our icons and church buildings, you cannot help but feel proud of
artisans who were capable of such masterpieces. We descend from such people.
Yet our pride in them can be dangerous.

“When we celebrated
the Millennium of our Baptism last June, of course we felt this pride. Our
Church Council occurred in such a good climate. There was the canonization of
the new saints, who remind us of what has been achieved. But even in such a moment
we shouldn’t close our eyes to ourselves. We have to ask ourselves what have we
contributed to this treasure trove? What will we leave to coming
generations? At a certain moment I looked around the Council hall and was
stunned. I saw so many empty faces, empty eyes. I thought, ‘Selfish fools!’
Their gazes were selfish and senseless. If this is our condition, how can we
take care of the faithful?”

I mentioned a translator I
had talked with just after the Council who had been disappointed with the faces
of many bishops. She asked me, “How many of them do you think are really
believers?” Her guess was about half while I said one can’t judge such a
thing so easily and that, in any event, many of them would be quite different
if they weren’t surrounded by other bishops.

“I understand well
what she felt,” said Archbishop Chrysostom. “I felt so strongly the
same thing that I took the floor at the Council and spoke out against many
present, and against myself as well. It was a criticism of the clergy, especially
the higher clergy. It wasn’t well received!” He laughed. “In fact
many in the hall showed their irritation. There were some evil eyes focused on
me, I can tell you. This anger mainly came from those who have no pastoral
responsibilities — rather the ones close to the Council for Religious Affairs,
that so-called ‘linking body’ that is really a chaining body. Some of our
clergy are willingly in conformity with the demands of these atheists.

“The years of
stagnation [the Brezhnev years] were very hard — more deadly for us than the
years under Stalin. In the Stalin years we had martyrs and confessors. Some
died. Others gave witness in their suffering. But the years of stagnation drove
us down. These were years of real degradation of mind and morality, degradation
of personality. It was a time especially hard on the bishops of the Russian
Orthodox Church. It was hard also for the Catholics and Protestants but they
resisted more successfully. The Baptists had their ‘grass root groups.’ The
most slavish people were Russian Orthodox bishops. True, we had some great
personalities like Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad, a great ecumenical
figure. But these were exceptions. In the years of stagnation, at a lower
level, there were many priests doing their job — a hard job! — to resist
those deadly trends. They helped to prepare the way for the fresh winds now
blowing — perestroika, glasnost, democratization.”

I asked him about his
former assignment. “I was bishop of a diocese in the Kursk region. We had
108 churches to serve a population of five-million people. But it was even
worse than it sounds because 45 percent of our parishes were without a parish
priest. There were 45 churches that hadn’t had divine services for two to five
years. There were 159 priests. Among them the average age was 70. I had the
challenge to rebuild the local church. I don’t want to be a modest liar. In
five years I managed to fill the gap. We didn’t have a single parish without a
priest. I left 182 priests serving 108 working churches. The average age of a
priest when I left was 30 years old. More than 20 of them had a higher
eduction. But in order to ordain them, one had to have a serpent’s wisdom! All
the administrative authorities and party bosses were absolutely against what I
was trying to do. Somehow it happened anyway. [laughter] Also I was able to
deprive of their posts those occasional rotten people who had penetrated the
church and who were discrediting it by their faithless attitude and their
immoral behavior. This was my second task. Such people had to be kicked out.
The passage of the Helsinki Final Act helped me in doing this. When it was
signed, the climate was more favorable. I was able to succeed in this cleansing
work. I deprived two scoundrels wearing clerical garments. They were stripped
of their ranks and the right to serve as priests. But this proved to be the
last straw. In 1984, after ten years as bishop in that diocese, I was sent, as
you see, to Siberia, to Irkutsk. I wasn’t able to last in the Kursk region
until the first years of perestroika. Now of course, the climate has
changed in a way that no one could imagine a few years ago. Last year, 700
Orthodox churches were opened. In the former time, the officials wanted to send
to Moscow statistics every year showing that there were fewer churches than the
year before. So you can imagine how the officials felt about me! I was a blank
spot, or worse.”

How is the situation now?
“Our Church is facing the most difficult and complex period in her
history. Atheism has greatly deteriorated. It used to be atheists could do
whatever they wanted — discharge clergy, publish articles. Of course people
didn’t take very seriously what they said. Their ideas weren’t respected. But
they had power. They were able to keep the Orthodox Church under strict
surveillance. They were able to make sure that only politically reliable people
entered the seminaries, and also to make sure that only the most slavish people
were promoted. True, there were capable people among those promoted, but these
were exceptions and morally they didn’t fit. Or they were nice people but
useless, without courage. But we found ways around all this vigilance.
Sometimes people can be ordained without entering the theological schools. And
one must add that, after so many years in power, the atheists were sometimes
complacent. They were lax in their vigilance. In various ways it was possible
to ordain good people to service in the church. But our problem is that, at
this moment, we don’t have unity. The higher ranks of the clergy are very far
from the lower clergy, and from the rank and file people in the church.”

Have you particular people
in mind? “I wouldn’t like to single out anyone. In any event, all of us
are compromised, all of us are sinners, none of us is adequate. Although all of
us were anointed with the same chrism [holy oil], we became obedient slaves, doing
what was ‘recommended’ by the civil powers — bowing down, bending our backs.
Nor were we prepared by our theological schools to answer the hard questions
that people increasingly bring to those with pastoral responsibility. There is
very little purposeful preaching. There are few pastors who can evangelize
those who are educated. The one seminary rector who tried to prepare clergy for
evangelical work was Archbishop Kyrill. For ten years he was the rector in
Leningrad. He was preparing people not only to be capable of doing the rituals
correctly but to be pastors. You know what happened. He was sent away from the
seminary to head the Smolensk diocese! The civil authorities were disturbed at
his success in preparing thinking pastors. He and I were like the Decembrists[20] sentenced to hard labor in Siberia. We were removed and sent to
remote places.”

Aren’t you painting too
dark a picture? “It is true that despite our problems we have many people
of deep faith and real intellect, priests and monks with an appropriate
inspiration. Still there are barriers on the way to their promotion. We also
have many faithful people among the Soviet intelligentsia. Though it is widely
thought that Soviet intellectuals are all atheists, this is far from true. Many
are believers. But few of them have contact with the Orthodox Church. In fact
many of them don’t trust the clergy. Some had built up unofficial contact in
the past and then got into trouble — it seems the clergy informed on them. The
intellectuals were betrayed. So there is a residue of distrust. Nor do we have
any publications within the church that can serve as a point of encounter. The
Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate is published every month but it is
mainly church news, ecumenical news, news about peacemaking activities. You
find nothing about the problems within the church or the society we are part
of. If you want to find writing about spirituality or the real history of this
century, you had better look in the secular publications — the literary
journals or certain magazines and newspapers. There you will find classic
essays by Florensky or Solovyov, pieces that are thrilling to read. Or look on
the television screen. Recently there have been many good films and
documentaries on television in which religious life is presented in a
thoughtful and positive way. The problem is that these films may raise up
expectations in those who see them that will not be met by our clergy. A
passionate interest has taken hold of many people about their history, their
lost culture, their religious roots. This is now a focus of national attention.
Society is prepared to offer its repentance. But all they find in the Russian
Orthodox Church is complacency! We are suddenly on the stage, face to face with
the people. But we have a blank face! We are not ready for the dialogue that is
offered to us, a dialogue between believer and non-believer, a dialogue not to
convert but to make contact, to illuminate, to help each other.”

What is the situation of
the church in Irkutsk? “For three years I knew only our babushkas.
Many were frail and sick. Yet we grew very close. I think they found in me an
open window into the sky, into life. It was very nice. 1988 was a strong year,
a productive year. We built up contacts with local institutions, with the local
branch of the Academy of Sciences, with all kinds of informal organizations.
There were some meetings where we had an audience of a thousand people talking
about all sorts of issues. We still have far to go. In the immense territory of
this diocese we have only 19 parishes. Although there are 700 churches newly
opened in the last year throughout the Soviet Union, none are in this diocese.
There are three Orthodox churches serving this large city. We badly need a
fourth, but where would we get the funds to restore a church?”

What about the condition of
the Russian Orthodox Church following the Council? “We have a much better
church law now. The priest is the head of the parish once again, not someone
pushed on the church by those who have no love for us. At the same time there
are also some disturbing signs. There was one bishop appointed recently,
Gavriel, who now heads half of my former diocese, the eastern part. He was
Father Superior of the Monastery of the Caves near Pskov where he was criticized
for his rough manner. There were many complaints about him and his disgraceful
behavior. Yet now he is made a bishop! If in this period of perestroika and
glasnost the Russian Orthodox Church nominates disgraced people to high
pastoral responsibilities, it is likely that we will have a schism. In fact we
can see indications of such a trend. Here we are, in a society returning to
Lenin’s Period. Remember that in Lenin’s time there were many splits within the
church. The Russian Orthodox Church was under great pressure then, and it is
under pressure now. But the times have changed. Now the people can express
themselves freely and can act freely. If the civic leadership controls the
activities of the church in such a time, those who cooperate with them will
cause a schism. But let us hope that we’ll not have it and that instead the perestroika
process will start in the Russian Orthodox Church.”

Doesn’t the consecration of
bishops like yourself indicate that there are people of integrity and courage
leading the Russian Orthodox Church? “Yes, there are good people in the
Holy Synod. They work hard. They are faithful people, believing people. The
only major failure is a lack of courage and will. I don’t condemn them. I
wouldn’t disgrace them. But I cannot understand how they can appoint someone
unsuitable to head a diocese.”

What brought you to serve
the church? “I was born in 1934 into a believing family. My parents were
passionate in their faith. My father was director of the church choir. I
started going to church early in life. Then I cooled down because of the
severity of church regulations — the strict fasts, the ban on going to the
movies — but that period in my life lasted only two years. I returned to
church and began working as an assistant icon painter. From 1948 to 1961, I
almost lived in churches, helping to gild and doing ornamental work. We were
restoring churches in many parts of Russia. In 1961 I entered the Moscow
Theological Seminary. I was 27. That was a very hard year for the church, a year
many churches were closed. Until that time I had little education. I hadn’t
completed high school. My meager education actually helped me get into the
seminary — the less promising you were, the more willing the civil authorities
were for you to take a place in the seminary! They would have been happy if we
were all insane and illiterate. People like me. In 1972 I was consecrated a
bishop. At the time few realized my thinking was on the wrong path, though
Metropolitan Nikodim placed high hopes in me. It was he who wanted me to be a
bishop. But I never wanted it. I wanted to be a parish priest. In fact that is
what I still want. I am ready today to stop being a bishop and just to be a
local pastor.”

Serving
at the Cathedral with Archbishop Chrysostom was Father Evgeni Kasatkin who took
time to show us around. After the tour we sat on a bench in a chilly corner
where restoration work was underway.

I asked what had brought
him to religious belief. “While visiting the church I was more and more
filled with a feeling of veneration. The will to serve the Church penetrated to
the depth of my soul.”

Did your parents
sympathize? “My mother died in the siege of Leningrad so didn’t live to
see it happen. My father was against it.”

What brought you to the
priesthood? “I wanted to be a priest since I was a boy. Before entering
the seminary I had studied rigorously by myself. I had a diploma from the
University of Leningrad and so had the right to use the Leningrad Public
Library where all the books printed since Peter the Great are in the stacks. I
was accepted by the Moscow Theological Seminary during the time Metropolitan
Filaret [at the time of the interview head of the Church’s External Affairs
Department] was rector. He was much loved by all the students. He knew us
all.”

Has perestroika had
any impact on the Church in Irkutsk? “After the Church Council at the Holy
Trinity Monastery last summer we had a public concert of church music. This had
never been possible in the past. Any interested person could come. It was a
charity benefit.”

Is the local Church
undertaking charity work? “It is beginning. We founded a Charity Society
just a few days ago. It is too early to say what we will be able to do but I
think believers can play a role in the local hospitals.”

Are there new churches
opening in this diocese? “Throughout the country many have opened though
so far there are no new ones in this diocese. But the process of change is
started and is moving in one direction, even if very slowly.”

Do you sense more people moving
from disbelief to belief? “Yes! Of course! Many. We have many adult
baptisms here.”

The next day we drove to
Listvianka, a village of log houses on the shore of Baikal. The lake draws
one’s attention from the village. Here is one-fifth of the world’s supply of
fresh water, nearly as much water as flows out of all the world’s rivers in one
year. We broke the ice and drank a glass full.

Baikal is fed by 336
streams but has only one outlet, the Angara River, a tributary of the Yenisei
River. The legend is that the tyrant Baikal had 336 sons and one daughter. The
sons did as they were told, giving all the wealth they collected to Father
Baikal, but the daughter, Angara, was strong-willed and independent — in other
words a true Siberian. She fell in love with Yenisei. As Baikal opposed their
wedding, they eloped, thus creating Baikal’s one exit point.

While the pure water of
Baikal is one of the wonders of the world, a less noticed miracle is the fact
that the village of Listvianka has its own church, St. Nicholas’. There are
whole cities without churches in Siberia. The pastor, Father Sergei Kozlov, was
35 years old. “Orthodoxy is not just a faith,” he said. “It is a
unified way of life. But in modern society there is no unified life. The
ordinary believer today is likely to have two lives running side by side — a
civic, ‘Soviet’ way of life, and a private life that includes a religious area.
At work you are one person, at home and in church another. But, as the Gospel
says, you cannot serve two masters. Yet how can you do otherwise? This is the
tragic tension we are experiencing today.”

What can be done about it?
“Russia needs to become Russia again. This doesn’t mean that all Russians
will be believers. There will continue to be atheists because there will
continue to be freedom of will. But atheism would no longer be the dominant
religion. It would no longer be imposed.”

Are perestroika and glasnost
moving society in this direction? “Yes, yes! Increasingly people are
moving toward belief and toward the Church. But still we have many serious
problems. Too many people are thinking primarily about the economic problems
and neglecting spiritual ones. Our main attention — even the attention of
political leaders — should be focused on religious problems. There is an
urgent need to remove all the impediments that stand in the way of religious
education and religious formation. Before we can recover our economic health we
must recover our spiritual health.”

Did you grow up a believer?
“I was an atheist until I was 27. Neither was Irina, my wife, a believer.
We moved to belief together.”

What led you toward the
Church? “There were so many things, so many personal religious
experiences. A crucial event was my first reading of the Gospel. It stirred me
deeply.”

How did you prepare for the
priesthood? “In the monasteries. I didn’t go to a theological school. I
was what is called an ‘obedient’ [a guest sharing in the monastic life without
taking monastic vows] at several monasteries including the Danilov Monastery in
Moscow. Then two years ago Archbishop Chrysostom ordained me in Irkutsk.”

Standing silently at Father
Sergei’s side while we talked was Ivan Ilyich, the church warden. He had a
sober face, white beard and wore a traditional embroidered Russian shirt under
his jacket. I expressed my hope to him that the day would soon come when no
Russian town or village would be without a church. “Let’s hope!” he
said. “But it is God’s will that decides.”

Orthodoxy in the Far East

Although I went to Ulan Ude
to meet the Buddhists who live beyond Lake Baikal, on the Sunday I was in the
city I went to the Holy Liturgy at the Church of the Ascension. The church was
crowded, the congregation singing with the choir in the more familiar places,
while in the side chapel baptisms were going on.

The 21 who were baptized
ranged in age from Anastasia, age four, to Georgi, about 30. A girl of 14 was
Buryat; the rest were of European descent. About half were teenagers or adults,
the rest children. Among them was a mother and her two grown daughters.
Together they renounced Satan, spat on him, and expressed their will to be
united in Christ. Father Andrei, the young priest, after explaining how to
cross oneself, made the sign of cross with oil on the brow, breast, between the
shoulders, the hands and feet of everyone being received. A bit of hair was cut
off, an ancient symbol of dedication to God. Each person was then baptized by the
pouring of water on the head, a real dowsing that was as close as one could get
to total submersion without going into a river, and then given a white ribbon
— symbolic remnant of a baptismal garment — and a small cross to wear. Each
of the god-parents was blessed as well.

Father Andrei spoke about
the meaning of baptism and the responsibilities that come with membership in
Christ’s Church. “This is your second birth. First you were born from your
mother’s body. Now you are born into Christ’s body, a spiritual rebirth. You
have started a new life. Live it worthily. Love God with your whole heart and
soul and love your neighbor, even your enemy, as yourself. By ourselves we are
powerless to love. How can we love an enemy? This is the major challenge. Many
fail. We are blind. But God can open our eyes and show us how to love.”
The service ended in reception of Communion.

The pastor, Father Martiri
Torchevski, asked about my impression of his church. I told him I had never
seen so many baptized at once or seen such an assembly line method. Neither had
I expected such a large portion to be students or adults. “This is
normal,” he said. “We get at least 20 every Sunday. I wish it could
be done more slowly but we haven’t enough priests and everything is done in too
much of a rush.”

I asked about the history
of this church. “This used to be a graveyard church. It was dedicated in
1786 and was brought back to life in 1945. Our main church in Ulan Ude, the
Church of the Mother of God, Consolation of the Sorrowful, is used as a storage
building for the museum. It was taken away many years ago. We have hopes of it
being returned but even if we had it, I don’t know how we could restore it.
Just a few years ago we put a great deal of money and time into restoring this
building.”

I asked about his
background. “My parents were believers. I grew up in the far east beyond
the Amur River. After serving in the army I worked with a local publisher. In
that province there was no church. Perhaps that is why I was a little slow in
realizing I wanted to serve in the church. I went to the theological school in
Odessa and was ordained in 1970 when I was 32.”

How did you go to church if
there was none in your province? “There was one in the next province. I
could get there by bus. Every four or five weeks I went for confession and
communion.”

As we left, Father Andrei
was presiding at a wedding in the main part of the church. The young couple
were wearing the crowns that are the most remarkable symbol in the Orthodox
marriage service.

Archangel

I had visited the Baikal
region in January. Back in the USSR in late April, I went to the arctic north
to celebrate Easter.

Six months of the year,
Archangel’s harbor on the White Sea is frozen in ice, but — at a time when
Russia had no access to the Baltic — Peter the Great saw in the remaining half
year a maritime opening to western Europe. A statue of Peter, the first
beardless czar, stands on the Archangel embankment. Peter seems to be peering
out not only toward London and Amsterdam but also towards the Dutchified Russia
he was determined to build no matter how many Orthodox whiskers he had to shave
in the process. Despite Peter’s later conquests on the Baltic and the
establishment of Saint Petersburg (now Leningrad), Archangel remains a busy
working port, though the modern city is mainly a timber center

At Saint Elijah’s Church,
the celebration of the resurrection began an hour before midnight and lasted
until dawn.[21] The church was filled to capacity with many standing outside. For
the first time local television covered it — with a crew that was more engaged
in the Liturgy than I expected. I noticed the sound man holding a microphone in
one hand and a burning candle in the other.

After the all-night service
Sergei and I were invited to join in Easter breakfast — a feast of eggs, meat
and vodka — at the nearby apartment of one of the parish priests, Father
Alexander Kozaruk, and his wife Maria. I asked them what perestroika had
meant for them. “More freedom!,” said Father Alexander. “Bell
ringing! More publishing!”

The day after Easter was
May Day, a national holiday. In Archangel the observance seemed routine at
first — crowds parading into the city’s central square, kids riding on
fathers’ shoulders, mothers pushing baby carriages, balloons in the air,
clusters of teenage girls laughing. There were the standard red-and-white
banners with texts praising the Communist Party and its goals. But there was
much that was without precedent. Many carried home-made green-and-white banners
bearing environmental messages: “Save Life, Save the Fish, Save the
Ecology of the North,” “Protect the Dvina River,” “Preserve
Nature for Our Children,” “Full Glasnost in Ecology,” “The
Fate of Our River is Our Fate,” “Open the Way for Alternatives to
Nuclear Power,” and “We Call for a Referendum on Nuclear Power.”
A Polish flag was held aloft at the edge of the crowd. I smelled the scent of
Solidarity. “I never saw anything like this,” Sergei said.

One of the speakers was
Vladimir Kasakov, an actor who chairs the regional environmental group founded
last November. “For nature there are no borders,” he said.
“Whether we are atheists or believers, rich or poor, Russian or Georgian,
we have one common home. We share the same fate as the environment. The issue
is how to live together, and this means how to end the violence against nature.
Nature will not accept this violence against her. The main victims of
ecological devastation are our children. It is in our power to save nature —
to purify the water, the air and the soil. To save nature means to save our
children and our grandchildren. We claim to be reasonable. Let us prove it by
our actions.” His speech drew lively and sustained applause.

After the assembly in the
square dispersed, there were informal gatherings in the city center where
people set up signs and exhibitions on topics ranging from housing problems to
the forthcoming meeting of Deputies to the Supreme Soviet. A display about
state cruelties in the past included a quotation from a letter written by a
prisoner to his wife: “What I am leaving to you is very modest. My wealth
is my love for you. I have never done anything wrong. I am guilty of nothing.
For no reason at all they made me a criminal. I know that you do not doubt
this. Be proud and never, never, not even for one moment think that I could
possibly cast a shadow of disgrace on you. Hold your head high.” It was
the last letter from a prisoner in the Davidov Camp near Ertsevo, Barrack
Three, in the Archangel district.

Sergei spoke of the awful
way Maxim Gorki had allowed himself to be used for deception by Stalin.
“For example Stalin sent Gorki to visit a prison on Solovetsky Island, a
former monastery in the White Sea to the north of Archangel. Everything was
made clean and humane for his arrival. They even set up a reading room. When
Gorki entered the room, there were prisoners on display reading newspapers. One
of them had the courage to hold his newspaper upside down. Gorki put it right.
He must have understood what such a gesture meant. But he wrote what Stalin
wanted about the ‘humanitarian treatment’ of prisoners on the island. This was
because Stalin wanted an answer to a book about the island that had been
published in the west by an escaped prisoner.”

The environmentalists gathered
in front of the cultural center, former site of Archangel’s cathedral,
destroyed in the thirties. Amid signs protesting nuclear power, Vladimir
Kasakov was selling tickets to a meeting to be held a few days later. “We
have ecology groups in various plants, offices and schools. A lot of people are
preoccupied with environmental problems, especially the negative impact of
nuclear plants on the environment. There are ecology groups all over the
country and we have ties with similar groups in West Germany and Norway. We
realize that we can’t solve environmental problems alone — it requires
international solidarity.”

I asked how he got engaged
in this. “The writer Vladimir Rasputin and his campaign to save Lake
Baikal was a big impetus for me. I came to know him in 1977.”

I commented on the
reference he had made in his speech to cooperation in the movement between
believers and atheists. “You find many believers active in the
environmental movement,” he said. “This is because there is a deep
connection between ecology of the soul and ecology of nature.”

We had lunch with the
pastor of Saint Elijah’s Church, Father Vladimir Kuzov. Father Vladimir, a
Ukrainian, was born in 1947. He has a long face, fine features and a closely
trimmed beard. He gestures constantly with his hands, Italian-style. Outsider
the church he wears a dark suit with a small gold cross on his lapel. He
studied at the Leningrad Theological Seminary, was ordained in 1977, served for
a time in Petrozavodsk and Leningrad, then came to Archangel in 1981.

“At present I am both
pastor and chairman of the church council. The council is a small group that
makes decisions about everyday matters. If there is an important matter, then
we have an assembly which any regular church-goer can attend. If we want, we
can elect someone else in the congregation as chairman. It doesn’t have to be
the pastor. But no one is imposed from the outside.”

Did he miss the Ukraine?
“No, I feel at home here. The north has been a good for believers. There
were many monasteries in the northern wilderness. In the old times monks would
go to the forest because they were the Russian desert. They found the forests
were a creative place to pray. The singing of the birds was good for the soul.
Most monasteries were built in the forests. You might be walking through the
forest and suddenly discover a beautiful scene — churches with golden domes,
white bell towers. Seraphim of Sarov went to a staretz [holy elder] for
advice and was directed not to an existing monastery but to the forest.”

He was nostalgic about
village life — real Russian stoves, babushkas, mushroom picking, an unhurried
way of life with a religious core. “But now the villagers are mainly old
people. They are the ones carrying on the traditional way of life.”

Is the church attracting
young people? “It’s common to hear a young person say, ‘I don’t pray very
much but I am a believer.’ You saw yourself how many in church Easter night
were young. With perestroika, many more are coming. The number of young
people being baptized is growing fast. There have been documentaries about
church life on television, especially during the Millennium. These stirred
interest. It isn’t as easy for young people to get involved in church — they
have their studies or their jobs — but they come on weekends. When you ask how
they came to belief, many of them say it was their grandmother who taught them
to pray and to be aware of God and the fundamentals of religion. We see a
number of teachers and doctors coming to church, being married in church and
bringing their children to be baptized. There is a big demand for literature
about church life — calendars, Bibles, prayer books.”

And what about older
people? “You could say the same. A few days ago a man of about 40 came to
ask me about sacraments, the eucharist, God. He said, ‘I wouldn’t yet say I am
a faithful person but I feel interest. I want to learn.’ Some people ask about
parts of the Bible — what does a certain story and commandment mean. The
picture is encouraging. It is a big change. The only problem is that it is very
hard to meet all the needs.”

Can you manage? “Yes,
but it is a huge job. We have three priests in our church and this isn’t enough
when you think of all the services to conduct, the confessions, baptisms, marriages
and funerals, the people who are sick, all those who need to talk to you, those
who are preparing to enter the church. You need to call on the help of others.
Otherwise it would be impossible. You have to keep time for your wife and
children.”

Are there study groups for
those who want to know more? “It isn’t ideal but now we can educate people
in the back of the church. We teach basic prayer, the meaning of baptism and
marriage, how to prepare for confession, information about fasting, the meaning
of certain symbols. It’s very basic instruction. Also there are occasional
opportunities in places where we were never invited. Last summer I was able to
speak about the meaning of Christianity and the Orthodox Church before students
in a local school. There is now another invitation — somehow I have to find
the time. I was interviewed twice in the local newspaper. My picture was in the
paper! My hope is that the new legislation on freedom of conscience will
increase the possibilities for religious education.”

Is your church involved in
charitable work? “Not yet on a regular basis, but we have made some
gestures. We went to a local orphanage and presented a television set. Now we
are preparing ourselves for regular engagement.”

What about the local
Council for Religious Affairs? “We find it easy working with Mikhail
Feodorovich [the head of the local Council for Religious Affairs]. We like him.
He has a warm heart. He respond quickly to any requests. If we have any
troubles involving civic organizations, we turn to him for help.”

While in Archangel, I twice
happened to catch religious programs on Soviet television. On the afternoon
before Easter, the documentary, “Church”, first aired during the
Millennium the previous June, was rebroadcast. On the evening news two days
later there was a feature about Saint Xenia of Petersburg, a member of that
peculiar tribe of saints especially beloved in Russia, the iurodivii —
fools for Christ’s sake. Age 26 when her husband died, Xenia felt as it was she
who had died. Afterward she gave away everything she possessed, saying,
“The Lord feeds the birds of the air. I am no worse than a bird.”
Relatives attempted to prevent the distribution of her husband’s estate on the
ground that she was insane but the physician who examined her declared that she
was of sound mind. For eight years she disappeared from the city. When she
returned she was wearing her husband’s old uniform, now reduced to rags, and
would only answer to his name, Andrei Theodorovich. She was often seen on the
streets of the poorest districts. The copper kopeks she was given — she never
accepted more than a kopek — she in turn distributed to others. She became a
source of solace and guidance to many people. Workers building a church at the
Smolensky Cemetery noticed that someone was carrying many bricks to the top of
the scaffolding at night — it was discovered she was responsible. She refused
all offers for indoor lodging yet managed to live her wandering life for
forty-five years. Throughout that time she always radiated a deep happiness,
meekness, humility and kindness. When she died at the age of 71, she was buried
in the Smolensky Cemetery where her grave became a place of pilgrimage.
Eventually a chapel was erected over her body.

In recent years the Smolensky
Cemetery was designated by city planners as a site for apartment buildings. The
people of Leningrad, wanting to protect the grave of Xenia, protested. Finally
the city council agreed to erect the buildings elsewhere.

The reporter interviewed
various people who had come to pray at her grave — old and young, men and
women. “I come for consolation,” said one woman. “Does she help
you?” “Yes! Of course!”

Karelia

Karelia — the Karelian
Autonomous Soviet Sociliast Republic — is part of the Russian north. Most of
the land is forested. The Karelian economy is centered on wood products and
paper manufacture. The eastern region has been part of Russia since the
Fourteenth Century but the border with Finland was not established until 1947.
The capital, Petrozavodsk (Peter’s Foundry), was founded on the western shore
of Lake Onega by Peter the Great in 1703 to provide armaments. The foundry has
since become a huge tractor factory. There are hundreds of lakes. In January,
when I was there, ice on Lake Onega blocked access to Kizhi Island, location of
the most famous wooden church in Russia, the many-tiered Church of the
Transfiguration with its ascending ranks of twenty-one silvery grey cupolas. In
the summer connections between lakes and rivers make it possible to go by boat
not only from Petrozavodsk to nearby Kizhi but all the way to southern Europe.

In Stalin’s time the statue
of Peter the Great that used to stand in the center of the main square was
replaced by a bronze Lenin. “Now there is a desire to put the statue of
Peter the Great back where it was,” said a city guide. “That would
mean moving Lenin’s statue. The city council has put this off on the grounds of
expense. The statue of Peter has been moved twice so far — from the central
square to an inconspicuous courtyard and then, ten years ago, down to the lake
front.”

Archimandrite Manuil
Pavlov, Vicar of the Diocese of Karelia, is a large man with sympathetic eyes
and wispy black beard streaked with grey. On the walls of the living room,
apart from the icon corner, were pictures of old churches. A small model of
Kizhi’s Transfiguration Church stood on the upright piano.

His grandfather, Pavel, now
85, shares the house with him. He laid stones for the first churches built in
the north after the last world war. Thirty years ago he helped restore the Holy
Trinity Cathedral in Leningrad.

“Easter is the real
time,” said Father Manuil after we exchanged the traditional Easter
greeting. “Truly these are bright days. Whether people believe or not,
heaven and earth are celebrating the resurrection. During the Easter days, we
experience an natural closeness.”

What effect has perestroika
had on Karelia? “If you drop into a shop, you don’t see changes. On
the other hand we have changed. The most important thing is that we have
lost the feeling of fear. It used to be that I didn’t care what newspapers were
saying. Now I do care. I want to read them. Of course I am especially happy
about what is happening for believers. The government no longer thinks of the
church as a foreign land within the country. We are now recognized as an
important part of our country, people able to do something for the improvement
of society. It used to be that the role of the Church was limited by the law of
1929. In fact it is still the law. But life advances before decrees. The
activity of the Church is beyond the 1929 limits. We await the new law on
freedom of conscience that is being considered right now.”

What sort of changes are
occurring in Karelia? “Valaam Monastery is in this region, in Ladoga Lake.
It hasn’t yet been officially returned but we anticipate having it back. Its
restoration is underway. A lot must be done. People with the skills for the
indoor repairs and fresco restoration are rare. At least we have managed to
prevent further decay of the structures. I was amazed by the sense of sacred
space when I visited Valaam last year. Even after these many years without a
living monastic community, it is still a blessed place. There is a halo around
it. I long for the day when Valaam is a living monastery again.

“We now have a Charity
Fund in Karelia. I am on the committee that decides how to use the funds.
Members of my parish are now helping in local hospitals and our priests are
able to visit patients. I participated in the opening of a new home for elderly
people.

“Another change
involves education. A year ago I would never have imagined that I would be
invited to give lectures on the history of the Russian Orthodox Church before
history students at the Petrozavodsk University. It used to be that some
students would come one by one for private conversation, just to communicate on
matters of faith. Others wanted to come but were afraid. To a large extent the
clergy were kept separate from the people, even from believers. I could give a
sermon but otherwise I had no contact with my own flock. Konstantin Kharchev
commented that by cutting off the priest in this way, we were unable to do much
to raise the level of public morality, and thus it was a stupid policy on the
state’s part.”

I asked about rumors that
Kharchev would not continue in his post. “Now he is in the hospital but
next he will be appointed an ambassador. He did a good job. The two interviews
with him in Ogonyok were excellent. They expanded the horizon. But I
don’t think his departure means a set-back for religious developments. The
Council for Religious Affairs is going in a new direction. It used to block the
way. Now it actively helps in protecting religious rights. Their staff in
Karelia are active reformers. They say yes even before they are asked.”

What is the role of the
Orthodox Church in the new situation? “We have accumulated traditions and
values important not only to believers but to all human beings. The time has come
to open these treasures to everyone. Not that everyone will become believers.
But they can use our store of knowledge and moral values to improve themselves
and society as a whole and move closer to a life in peace. This will be a
benefit to all.”

How can the church prepare
more people to respond to the possibilities that now exist? “Archbishop
Kyrill has just opened a school for readers in Smolensk. He is a good man. He
was much loved when he headed the seminary in Leningrad. He has done a lot to
prepare people to bring the message of belief to others. There will be another
similar school in Minsk next year.”

I commented that there
seemed to be more attention in Orthodox churches to the importance of sermons.
“When I am giving a sermon, I look and see what sort of people are there.
If they are young, I try to explain things that may be strange to them. The
church shouldn’t be foreign.”

On Bright Thursday — all
the days of the first week after Easter are prefixed “bright” — we
drove together to Olonets, a small city near Lake Ladoga.

On the way out of
Petrozavodsk we stopped to visit the Church of Saint Catherine the Martyr, a
cemetery church in an old part of the town where the old wooden houses survive.
With tears in her eyes, an old woman praying in the church, Lidiya, told me
that she “listens every day to God’s Word on the Voice of America.”
She instructed me to kiss my wife.

“There used to be 38
Orthodox churches in this city,” said Father Manuil as we drove away.
“Three are still in use. One had its domes removed. The main periods of
destruction were 1930-32 and 1934-38. After the war some churches could reopen
but then there was another big wave of church closing in the sixties, the Khrushchev
time. Now we are in a period where not only city churches are being reopened
but churches in towns and villages. There are many places where new churches
are under construction or are planned. Under the new legislation we expect that
local authorities will have no right to retain a church building that is empty
or only used for storage purposes. This will make it easier to start new
parishes. But there is often the problem that a confiscated church is used for
another purpose — a club or office. Then it can be quite difficult to get it
back. And there is the problem of all those churches that were destroyed. New
ones must be built and even if the local authorities are willing for this to
happen, it isn’t easy to get the money and materials needed. Even though we
expect many positive changes in the new law, at the moment all we have is the
old law which denies religious communities the right to get loans. Even the
diocese is not supposed to loan money! On the other hand life is going beyond
the limits of the old law. Our diocese is helping local churches. In such
matters you depend on the good will of local authorities and their willingness
to consider the old law dead. But not all local authorities are like that. We
are among the lucky ones.”

What are the statistics for
the diocese as a whole? “Besides the three in Petrozavodsk, we have three
other working churches — the fourth opened five years ago in Segisha and the
fifth opened last year in Olonets. Another church is near the Finnish border at
Sartavala. In addition to the six, now we have permission to use a number of
local chapels for services. These aren’t full-time churches and so under the
present law can’t be registered. They are in a new category altogether. We
haven’t enough priests and the villages near the chapels are very small, but we
can have occasional services at these places — liturgies, weddings, baptisms,
funerals. In the former times such chapels couldn’t be used. It was impossible.
They just stood there rotting. Now priests can come on certain dates — perhaps
once a month — so faithful people won’t have to travel to the city. Local
believers have been given keys to the chapels. They are cleaning and repairing
them and bringing back the icons they were keeping in their homes. There are now
nine chapels like this in the territory. We hope to have use of another six but
there are still problems to be solved in a few places. Not everything goes
smoothly but we have no problems with the Council for Religious Affairs.”
Passing through the village at Novinka, we stopped to see a chapel dedicated to
the Archangel Michael, now used for occasional services.

Bells were ringing in
welcome as we arrived at the Church of the Dormition, in a wooded area outside
Olonets. The pastor was a tall young man, Father Alexander Varlamov. He led us
into church to sing Easter prayers before the iconostasis. “We celebrated
the two-hundredth anniversary of our church this year,” said Father
Alexander. “It’s a graveyard church with many icons of the old style of
the Northern Russian School from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries.”

He introduced an old woman
who, for 52 years, took care of the church, helping to safeguard it through the
years, first from the early thirties until after the war, then again in the sixties
until last year.

“In the years the
church was closed we lost some of the festal icons and also the Royal Doors of
the iconostasis. The new doors were carved by a local with love in his heart.
The Dormition icon has a text at the bottom recording the visit by Catherine
the Great for the church’s consecration May 28, 1788. Local people have brought
us many ancient icons that were handed on within their families for
generations. Collectors would pay a lot for them but believers want them to be
in the church. Many people are coming here. We know each other. It is like a
family. We are well-disposed to each other. There is a climate of sympathy, a
feeling of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Not every church is so blessed. One
problem faced in many places is that the church is too small for the many
people who come — it’s hard to develop a spirit of community in such
circumstances. In former times people would say, ‘We are going to our church.’
They didn’t say the church. They felt at home there.”

Back in Petrozavodsk that
night, I talked with Nikolai Stepanov, Father Manuil’s assistant, recently
graduated from the Leningrad Theological Seminary but not yet ordained. He
mentioned that there is already a small monastic community at Preoversk, near
Valaam, “a seed of the revived Valaam.”

I mentioned to him how
impressed I had been in 1987 to notice the large number of people receiving
communion at the seminary church in Leningrad. “This is the merit of
Archbishop Kyrill from the time that he was rector. He often explained what the
eucharist is and encouraged more frequent communion. He also did much to
restore a closer relationship between the priest and the people. For many years
the priest was cut off from his flock, allowed no role except to stand at the altar.
He could explain things in a deeper way only with a trusted inner circle. Now
every Sunday we meet the church-goers and seminary students explain the meaning
of Orthodox faith and many other things. This is not only for believers but for
anyone who wants to come. Many people in Leningrad show their interest. The
seminary hall holds about a hundred and that really isn’t big enough. People
come from all walks of life — workers, people with desk jobs, intellectuals.
Every week there is a special topic decided after consultation with the
participants and students — sacraments, history of the Church, how Orthodoxy
differs from other confessions, the place of faith in the life of writers like
Gogol and Dostoyevsky. One week we discussed the Optina Pustyn Monastery and
the writers who visited there. Whatever the topic, first we present a report
which can be accompanied with slides or a film and then there is a general
discussion. The seminary choir performs. Sessions last about two hours, until
Vespers.”

What happens if there is no
longer a hall big enough? “Maybe eventually it will become a television
show.”

The next day, with two
local priests, I had lunch with a local Orthodox family living in a large log
house. “In our house you find many old traditions of Karelia,” said
my host, an old man with a white beard. “Here my wife and I have been
living for forty years. Here our children have grown to adulthood. Here we have
prayed. Here we have known death. Today we are remembering Anastasia’s death.
Many have been guests at this table, and not only those who share our Orthodox
faith. We welcome you! Today we have eternal joy. All of us know that if Jesus
hadn’t risen from the dead, our hope would be in vain. Christ is risen! May God
protect you and your family and send you his bliss.”

One of his daughters, a
teacher, told about recent events at the music school where she works. “We
have started a choir that is singing classical religious music. More and more
people want to hear this and even to sing it. Right now we are singing many
works by Saint John of Damascus and Easter music.”

One of the priests, Father
Vladimir, whose greying beard had enough room inside to give shelter to a
hibernating bear, told the story of a Russian who, late in the Nineteenth Century,
went to the west for his education, entered business, married a German woman,
and built up a fortune. “Late in his life he became deeply restless. His
wife understood that his unhappiness had to do with his homeland and convinced
him to return to Russia for a visit. He finally agreed. When he had crossed the
border his carriage had a minor accident — the driver had to stop for repairs.
The man went for a walk. It happened the path he followed brought him to a
church. There was no service going on but the door was open. Inside an aged
woman was praying in front of a respected icon. She cried. She groaned. Her
prayer took the plank away from his eyes. He understood the emptiness in his
life. It was crystal clear. He lost his blindness and fell in love with
Orthodoxy. He brought his family to Russia and lived a faithful life, not
seeking wealth but serving God and his neighbor. Finally he passed away in
peace.”

Late that afternoon, at the
Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Father Vladimir blessed a small
icon that Sergei had just purchased, a photo mounted on wood made by a local
cooperative and sold for ten rubles the city’s main department store. Father
Vladimir gave the icon the maximum benediction rather than the quick blessing I
had anticipated. In his hearty voice, he sang and prayed for a quarter hour,
finally splashing both the icon and ourselves with blessed water. Boris
Feodorovich Detshiev of the Council for Religious Affairs, who witnessed the
blessing, says Father Vladimir is deeply loved by local believers. I could well
believe it.

It happened that a group of
teachers was in the church at the same time, the Friday group I had heard about
who come after school to better understand the Orthodox Church. Father Georgi,
a young Ukrainian, was leading the informal discussion. “Christianity
teaches tolerance and forgiveness,” he said. “Impatience even about
little things can do harm. If someone steps on your foot by accident and you
get angry about it, soon everyone around you is snapping. The whole atmosphere
is poisoned.”

As we left the church,
Boris Feodorovich made the comment that the headache he had had earlier in the
day disappeared the moment he entered the sanctuary. “You can believe in
God or not believe, but when your headache goes, you know it.”

He recalled a story told in
the magazine Science and Religion. The author asked an old woman in
front of the church, “Why do you stand here so long? What does being here
give you?” She said, “It gives me a sense of godliness.”

“You know,” he
said, “babushkas don’t waste words!”

Vilnius

The center of Orthodoxy in
Vilnius — mainly a Catholic city — is the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral in
the heart of the old town. The present church was built in the Seventeenth
Century but stands where a church was first built in the Fourteen Century. Two
monastic communities, one for men, the other for women, have buildings on the
same grounds: the Monastery of the Holy Spirit and the Convent of Saint Mary.

I had lunch with Bishop
Antony Tcheremissov and Father Vasili Novinsky. Until Bishop Antony’s
consecration, he was at the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. “Vilnius is my
native city,” he said, “but I never expected to be its Orthodox
bishop. This my second week as bishop and you are my second foreign visitor.
The last one was Cardinal [Jean-Marie] Lustiger from Paris who visited our
monastery and took part in our Easter celebration. The next day I was his guest
when he visited the seminary and other Catholic centers in Kaunas.”

I asked Bishop Antony what
were the local church’s plans for the immediate future. “We are hoping to
build a new church — but probably we will close another church, not because of
pressure from the authorities but because the church in question isn’t
self-financing. There are too few Orthodox believers in that town.”

Is it hard for Russians
being a minority in Lithuania? “We are trying to do things to promote
Russian culture, just as Lithuanians are promoting theirs. Within the
Lithuanian Culture Union a Russian Cultural Center has been started — also a
Polish Center. We are planning a Russian folk festival in connection with the
Feast of the Holy Trinity. There will be the traditional decoration of birch
trees. We will have Russian artists and circus performers. A choir is going to
sing. It’s a beginning.”

He spoke at length about
the Church’s responsibility to initiate charitable work. “Be merciful!
This is a command of God. It is essential for all believers. The tradition of
Christian charitable service is as old as the Church but was prohibited by the
Soviet government sixty years ago. A year ago it became possible to begin the
revival of this tradition of mercy here in Lithuania. Following the example of
the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, I want to encourage our local flock to
take responsibility for works of mercy. There is a tremendous need. We have
many people who are disabled, sick, lonely — people in need of love and help,
who have no one close. There is a shortage of nurses in some places, but even
where this is not the case, there are sick people who have no family nearby who
are longing to hear a word of goodness. There is an urgent need for merciful
actions. The need is not only material but spiritual, the need to illuminate
souls. Believers should be in every hospital at least a few times a week and
priests whenever they are needed. We don’t need a list of people to visit. It
needn’t be costly. We don’t need to bring luxurious food. It is enough to bring
an apple or an orange. The thing is to show our care, to open our soul to
whomever we are visiting. If we do that, those we visit will do it to us.

“The Danilov Monastery
is a center for such activity in Moscow. We formed a relationship with a
hospital for the mentally ill. We sent volunteers to visit patients there three
or four times a week. Vladimir Nicholaivich, the director of the hospital, told
me, ‘We have enough hands but not enough good words.’ He knows that not even
the best medicine can heal the sick. Many patients are in such a hospital
because their trust in human goodness was destroyed. If they are ever to leave
the hospital, it is essential that their trust in the power of goodness is
restored. Our volunteers were allowed to read from the Bible or other holy
books. In former times, something like this couldn’t be imagined. We couldn’t
dream of it! In such a hospital, talk about religion was regarded as simply one
more indication of mental disorders. Now such talk is welcome. The director
said that our work there is a miracle.

“This is not only
something good for patients in a hospital. I recall two older women in Moscow,
both very lonely, without any relations. All they had was their small pension,
just enough to maintain life. They were losing interest in life. They felt
abandoned. No one had any need for them. When the chance came to visit the
hospital, they responded. Now they go to that hospital every day for seven or
eight hours. They are needed. They are doing something important in the lives
of these sick men and women. Patients meet them with tears in their eyes. Life
is converted into a new form for both the visitors and those they visit. This
is the kind of activity by Orthodox believers I hope to encourage here in
Lithuania.”

“Last year,”
Father Vasili added, “we laid the foundation for relations with a
residential school for children who for some reason can’t be with their parents
— they were abandoned or their parents are alcoholics unable to care for
children. A number of Orthodox people came to the school at Christmas to bring
presents. The children put on a performance for us — it was lovely! Part of it
was shown on television. We had a lively discussion with the children, and the
teachers were pleased as well. It was of enormous importance for children. We
have agreed that next the children will come for a visit to the monastery so
they can see how monks live.”

“Now we have many
invitations from schools, institutes interested in arranging discussions about
religion,” Bishop Antony continued. “In the past only atheists were
permitted to teach religion. We are asked to talk about the situation of the
church, to give some historical information, to explain fundamentals of
religious life. The invitations are still put in a rather ambiguous way with an
eye on the law of 1929 and its restrictions. But what used to be impossible is
now going on. We are on the way, even though it isn’t clear what is going to be
allowed under the new law. The hope we cherish is that the new law will not
veto initiatives like this.”

Do you expect the new law
on religion to permit religious education in public schools? “No, but I
hope it will be possible to invite religious people to speak in school. But I
assume regular religious education will be permitted only on church premises. I
think we will have the right to set up schools for religious education.”

“I hope we can have
Sunday schools,” said Father Vasili.

“But eventually,”
said Bishop Antony, “we should have the possibility of religious education
in public schools — not compulsory but for students who want it.”

Our conversation turned to
the Bolshevik revolution and its consequences. “My impression is that the
czarist government lost the wheel of power long before the revolution,”
said Bishop Antony. “Many actions that should have been taken on behalf of
the well-being of the people were not taken. The need for democracy was
ignored. These things made the idea of revolution very sweet. Many followed
with no idea what the actual results would be. At the beginning the revolution
seemed to live up to its promises. The first Decree of Lenin, the Decree of
Peace, made people very enthusiastic. Then the notorious events followed. Now
we have experienced the consequences and have to ask: What is the remedy?”

“While Stalin was
alive,” Father Vasili said, “there were still many people who didn’t
regret the revolution. People believed in Stalin so much. Many prisoners wrote
him letters, sure he wasn’t to blame for what had happened to them. They
believed that if he would read their letter, he would understand and correct
the injustice. I know of people facing the firing squad whose last words were,
‘Glory to Stalin.’ Anyone could be blamed but not Stalin. And Stalin knew this.
He encouraged the idea. Therefore the people accepted him. When he died, the
whole nation was in grief. It is only little by little that we have come to
understand what happened and still there are those who cannot stand criticism
of him.”

“I was in the fourth
grade at school,” Sergei remembered. “The teacher was called out and
then came back and we could see something was wrong. We were given the news.
The teacher cried. We all cried. For days afterward we all wore black mourning
bands.”

“There is a story that
the Patriarch of the Georgian Church came to Moscow and was summoned by Stalin
to come to his home, ” said Bishop Antony. “When he arrived, Stalin
asked, ‘Who do you fear more, Stalin or God?’ The Patriarch said, ‘God.’ And
Stalin said, ‘No, it is me you fear, otherwise you would not have worn a civil
suit when you came to see me.'”

I saw Bishop Antony again
in the early evening at an annual Easter panikhida (requiem service)
conducted in the cemetery. He greeted many people as he arrived, then spoke
briefly from the front of the small cemetery chapel, the Church of Saint
Efrosinya, to say how happy he was to be home again and to have become Bishop
of Vilnius.

“Jesus taught us to
live by the Gospel,” he said, “to cherish goodness, peace, humility
and forgiveness. This is the way of life we should follow. He has given us the
hope of being raised from the dead. Despite all of us being sinful, we can live
in the hope of the resurrection. As believing people, praying people, let us
pray for those who have gone before us that they will enjoy eternal life. Let
our Easter joy reach the dead.”

Baku

From Catholic Lituania, I
flew 1500 miles southeast to Moslem Azerbaijan. Arriving in Baku at 3 a.m. on a
warm May morning, I found myself in the middle of curfew. My passport and visa
had to be shown at five military check points between the airport and my hotel
on the shore of the Caspian Sea. A fleet of tanks was parked next to the
government building. Half a year before — November 1988 — the tanks had taken
up positions blocking Baku’s central plaza following a rally at which 400,000
Azeri demonstrators waved the purple and red national flag and applauded
speeches denouncing the Armenian desire to separate the territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijani rule.

The Armenian church, Saint
George the Enlightener, stands by a large plaza in central Baku. The pastor,
Father Vartan Dilouyan, was the only Armenian priest still remaining in Baku.
The stress of local ethnic tension was clearly visible in his face. I asked him
about the tension between Armenians and Azeris.

“Until the tension in
Nagorno-Karabakh, the climate was very favorable. If you had come here last
year, you would have found a crowded church with a good choir. On holy days the
church was completely filled. Now most of the young people have left. Mainly it
is the old people still in the city. Now some people have returned from
Armenia. They say they cannot imagine life without Baku. But there are others
still leaving the city — they don’t trust the future here. In my sermons I try
to persuade people to stay. I express my hope that the situation will be
normalized and friendly relations restored. Baku was always a place of welcome
and safety for every sort of person. Azeris are by nature hospitable. Everyone
was treated with respect.”

Is there reason to be
hopeful? “Having lived in Baku fifteen years, I know the Azeris very well
and I am confident in the long run, but right now the prospects are gloomy.
While the situation has eased, Armenians still living in Azerbaijan are
terrified. The problem will remain this way until the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh
is resolved. When the situation gets worse there, it immediately gets worse
here. The government has taken measures to prevent attacks but there is no way
that they can guarantee security.”

What has happened to
members of this church? “In December our church wasn’t attacked but many
flats where Armenians lived were attacked by gangs of young people. The windows
of my flat were smashed. Thanks to a neighbor, I was able to escape. Then
soldiers came and drove the gang away.”

What about the other
clergy? “None were injured but they have now left the city. It is almost a
miracle that none if them were killed. They are married and have families. I am
a monk and so I have stayed.”

What is happening with
other Armenian churches in Azerbaijan? “In Kirovabad the church is now
closed. The priest escaped and no other priest is prepared to take his place. I
know his feeling. I am living in my apartment again but I feel
frightened.”

Who are in these gangs and
why do they attack Armenians? “They are just young people — fifteen,
eighteen years old. I don’t think it was their idea. Armenians never hurt them.
Someone guided them. But who? We don’t know. All we know is that young people
are always used by older people to do their dirty work.”

But what is provoking the
older people behind the gangs? “There are fanatics on both sides. In
Azerbaijan you find the idea that Armenians are trying to take what doesn’t
belong to us. There are Armenians who only use Nagorno-Karabakh. They don’t
really care about it. They have other plans. Their interest is only to stir up
trouble between the two nations. When we had our terrible earthquake in Armenia
last year, Gorbachev came and walked through the ruins. There he was among
grieving people who had lost their dear ones and their homes. Yet in this
moment when we should be putting all our energy into rebuilding, there were
some shouting at Gorbachev about Nagorno-Karabakh. I was ashamed. It is a
fragile situation in which even a small event can have tragic consequences when
this idea exists. When Gorbachev visited the United States, some rich Armenians
living there gave a present to Raisa Gorbachev. Here in Azerbaijan some people
said, ‘Look, those Armenians are bribing Gorbachev!’ It is ridiculous but there
are those ready to believe it.”

How can fanatical forms of
nationalism be overcome? “The national issue is very delicate. In this
instance, it means finding some solution for Nagorno-Karabakh acceptable to
both peoples. When that happens, Armenians will be able to live in safety among
Armenians again. The Armenians are not vengeful. At the forthcoming meeting in
Moscow on the nationalities issue, perhaps they will make decisions that help
us. If the central authorities aren’t able to solve the problem, the problem
will continue.”

What solution do you hope
for? “It makes no difference to me whether the territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh is considered part of Azerbaijan or Armenia. The major point
for me is simply that we should live in peace.”

Assuming a solution is
found, how long will it take to bring relations between Armenians and
Azerbaijanis back to their former level? “If there are no more tragedies,
fifty or sixty years. Not sooner. The younger generation is poisoned with
enmity.”

Orthodox Journalism

Metropolitan Pitirim
directs the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate and was one of the
three Orthodox bishops elected to the Supreme Soviet. He also heads the diocese
of Volokolamsk to the south of Moscow, teaches New Testament at the Moscow
Theological Seminary, and is pastor of the Resurrection Church near the
Kremlin. He is reputed to be a friend of Raisa Gorbachev. Both are active in
the Fund for Culture. With his massive snow-white beard, he is also one of the
most photogenic Russian prelates.

On May 19, 1989, he
launched his latest project, The Church Messenger, at a press conference
in Moscow. A weekly newspaper operated by the Russian Orthodox Church, it is
the first church-run newspaper for public sale (30 kopeks a copy) rather than
restricted distribution since the revolution. A staff of ten had been hired.

The first issue included a
report of the baptism of 48 children in a Moscow children’s home where
parishioners from Our Lady of Tikhvin Church are doing voluntary service. There
was news of successful work in religious education being carried out by monks
of the Danilov Monastery. While reporting that 1700 churches and eighteen
monasteries had been returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in the past
eighteen months, the paper noted continuing resistance by officials in specific
cases, such as the refusal of the Council for Religious Affairs to authorize
the return of a cathedral in Saratov. Perhaps most surprising was an item about
the picketing of Patriarch Pimen’s office in Moscow by a group protesting the
transfer of Bishop Vladimir from the Diocese of Krasnodar to the Diocese of
Pskov. The picketers, all from Krasnodar, wanted him back.

The newspaper’s print run
— 50,000 copies of the first issue done on the Izvestia press — is
minuscule by Soviet standards. “Once the paper supply problems are
solved,” said Metropolitan Pitirim, “the Messenger will be
printed in much larger numbers.”

“I expect that the
paper will be read not only by believers but by those indifferent to religion
or interested but not committed,” he said. “While the main focus of The
Church Messenger will be religious news, we will also be considering
important issues of cultural and social life such as environmental issues. We
are concerned about care of natural resources. How can the destructive process
be brought to a halt? This is a spiritual as well as a technical question. A
healthy ecology depends on healthy dukhovnost. The spiritual person
understands his responsibility for life.”

Asked about future
development of the Publishing Department, he responded, “We have big
plans. We are reorganizing to increase our publishing capacity. This requires
overcoming the paper shortage and solving problems regarding hard currency. We
depend on help from our ecumenical partners. One project we have in mind is a
multi-volume Bible ornamented with the old Slavonic script. We also plan books
on the saints and works by Russian theologians like Pavel Florensky. Regarding
the enlargement of our printing shop and bindery, we want to set up a collective.
We are organizing a network of correspondents for the newspaper.”

Metropolitan Pitirim
announced that the Orthodox Church has requested return of the monastery at
Volokolamsk, his own diocese south of Moscow, and awaits with optimism the
response of the USSR Council of Ministers. “My hope is to celebrate the
feast of Saint Joseph of Volokolamsk on the monastery territory September 22
[1989]. In time the monastery will provide the place for an International
Orthodox Cultural Center where we can receive people who want to learn about
Orthodox monasticism.”

Meeting privately with
Metropolitan Pitirim later in the day, I reminded him of Dickens’ opening
sentence in A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was
the worst of times.” I wondered in what ways this applied to the present
situation in the USSR?

“It is the best of
times in the sense that there is an awakening of the will of people to work for
perestroika,” he responded. “It is the awakening of a sense of
initiative and responsibility, a sense of hope about what can be done. It is
the best of times in the sense that the spiritual life of the people is much
more in the open. But it is the worst of times in the sense that many people
still don’t have a clear idea of what to do and how to do it.”

I asked about the
consequences of perestroika for the church.

“Formerly the
separation of church and state was interpreted as the separation of the church
from social life. But traditionally the church was deeply engaged in social life
and charitable activities. Now you see the church becoming engaged in
responding to many social needs. Perestroika has re-awakened the life of
the community. You see artists, writers and scientists boldly discussing the
history and role of the church. More and more you hear discussion about dukhovnost.
You see what is happening with religious publishing. Religious concerts are
becoming commonplace. There is a different social climate. There is also
widespread public attention to the victims of purges. The church has
established a commission to gather information about believers who perished in
confinement. Everyone who died for their religious beliefs was a martyr. So for
us it is not only a question of the rehabilitation of these victims but
liturgical commemoration.” He showed me the April issue of Moscow
Church Herald, a colorful eight-page monthly publication of the Moscow
Patriarchate issued in Russian plus four other languages. On the first page
there was an article on religious services at a ravine in the Kalitnikovskoye
Cemetery in eastern Moscow where victims of Stalin’s reprisals were secretly
buried in the thirties.

I asked about the problem
of anti-Semitism. Did the church have a responsibility to help combat hatred of
the Jews? “The Church has never taught or condoned anti-Semitism. The Jews
are one of the nationalities. In the church itself we have many Jews and also
Jewish priests. Outbreaks of anti-Semitism have resulted from domestic rather
than religious factors, especially economic and social inequality. There are
many instances of believers rising to protect Jews.”

Was it not difficult to
combine his many church responsibilities with being a member of the Supreme
Soviet? “I am used to much work! I do not sleep more than five hours a night.
Still, yes, it is difficult to find all the time.”

My last question concerned
his life story. “I was the eleventh child of my parents. It was a
believing and praying family. My father was a priest as were several
grandfathers and great-grandfathers. In the thirties my father was arrested.
After three years he was released but he was very sick and soon died. I was 14
years old when he was taken away. It was at the moment of his arrest that I
remember deciding that, while I wanted to be a priest like my father, I would
be a monk and have no children, and you see this is what happened. My secular
schooling was at a technical institute. I think I can say that I was a lively
young man and an active worker. I never joined the Young Pioneers or Komsomol
but I always was very involved with people. I had many friends. My fellow
students used to say that it was hard to prepare for exams when I was around
because I had a tendency to tell funny stories. But somehow we passed our exams
and even got good marks. The conditions of life were very difficult. I know
what poverty is. I am familiar with grief. These eyes have seen terrible
things. Therefore it is my duty as both as a priest and Deputy to do what I can
to help people.”

One of those questioning
Metropolitan Pitirim at the press conference was Father Mark Smirnoff, an
Orthodox priest. Since 1988 Father Mark has been on the editorial staff of Moscow
News, a weekly newspaper which in the pre-Gorbachev years ran page after
page of official fiction about Soviet wellbeing, never reporting human rights
violations or official corruption and never noting religious events. Now it is
one of the most outspoken voices of glasnost, respected for its coverage
of human rights and controversial events. It regularly carries religious news
including reports of the violation of the rights of religious communities.
There are often profiles of believers.

Father Mark was also
co-editor of On the Road to Freedom of Conscience, to be issued in
Moscow in the fall of 1989 by Progress Publishers. “The book is
news,” he said. “There was a press conference announcing its
publication yesterday. We have never had a book like this before. It is a kind
of stage, a place for a public meeting on conscience and religion where you can
hear all sorts of speakers, some with familiar names, some never before
officially published. The authors come from a wide ecumenical spectrum —
Orthodox, Old Believers, Catholic and Protestant. Among them is Father Gleb
Yakunin [the Russian Orthodox priest and former prisoner].”

I asked about the book’s
content. “One author, Father Alexander Men, provided an essay about the
theological problem posed by the cult of personality. This is not just the cult
of Stalin but the cult of the divinized ruler, a problem that goes back at
least to the emperor cult in Roman times and which still remains with us in
this country. Another author focuses on the problem of the Russian Orthodox
Church normally being subservient to political rulers. A priest writes about
the problems faced by believers outside the cities where the local authorities
can be much more oppressive.”

Has mass media attention to
the church been reduced since the Millennium? “The amount of information
was much bigger during the Millennium weeks but that is understandable as many
things were tied to the event. So it’s true there is less in the mass media
today than a year ago but it is far from the nothing we used to have. It is
clear that a social process is now underway that is laying the foundation for a
new attitude regarding religion and the church. You see indications of this
every day. At the same time you can see the left and right in high relief. The
left wing of the mass media comes back to the topic of church and religious
life again and again. You see examples of this in magazines like Ogonyok and
Novi Mir and in television programs like ‘Outlook’ and ‘Before and After
Midnight.’ Right wing publications either ignore religious life or provide a
platform for the rear guard to attack changes going on in regard to the church.
One publication recently had an article on the ‘ugly symbiosis’ of the mass
media cooperating with religious associations. Part of the right wing tries to
combine patriotism and nostalgia for totalitarianism. They miss Stalin’s
purges. They like that kind of strict order.”

Do you face obstacles in
working as a journalist? “I am a stumbling block for both believers and
atheists. Not only some atheists but also some believers object to a priest
having such a job. I serve part-time at the Church of the Archangel Gabriel

[near the Krasniye Vorota — Red Gates — Metro stop]

but their view is that I
should be doing pastoral work full time. They forget that St. Paul supported
himself making tents. There are Protestants who object to me reporting
Protestant news and Orthodox who wish I would only give attention to Orthodox
events. In addition there are problems for any journalist in this country who
tries to cover religious news. I can tell you stories about priests and monks
who would rather be interviewed by a reporter from Time magazine or any
foreign publication than someone from the Soviet press. You can say whatever
you like to a foreign journalist. No one here will read it. But what you say in
the Soviet press is read here. The reader will compare your words with reality
and know what is true and what isn’t true. You have to be careful about what
you say.

“I am an example of
the kind of change occurring in the mass media because I am not only writing
for Moscow News and doing reports on religion for Novosti [the state
press agency] but I am appearing on television. Two years ago, I could have
been charged with anti-Soviet propaganda and been sent to prison for saying
privately what I can now say on television. It is amazing! Also I was the first
cleric to be called by my religious title on television. It used to be that
even bishops were addressed only by first name and patronymic. The program
director asked me how I should be addressed. I told him, ‘When you have a
general, you call him General So-and-so. When you have a professor, you call
him Professor So-and-so. Well, when you have a priest, you should call him
Father.’ He agreed. Now this practice is generally followed on Soviet
television despite criticism from the old guard in the Communist Party. What
they really censure is people like me being on television at all. There was an
article in the April issue of the publication of the Union of Journalists
saying it was tolerable in these times to have a priest on television but why
call him Father Mark?”

How did you get into
journalism? “By accident — a car accident. I was badly injured in 1978.
For a long time I could only work while sitting. I couldn’t stand at the altar.
I became an archivist. For years I worked in Leningrad on the papers of
Vladimir Solovyov.[22] Now some of the material I discovered is being published — for
example a Solovyov letter to Czar Nicholas II was published in Novi Mir
earlier this year. When perestroika started in 1986-87, I was doing
archival work at the Danilov Monastery here in Moscow. The chance came to do
some writing about religious events for Moscow News and that was my real
starting point as a journalist.”

Did you grow up as a
Christian? “My parents were not believers but they were sympathetic to my
religious development. I was baptized soon after my birth in 1951 but had no
religious education. I didn’t take any interest in religion until I was a young
man working at a factory, studying in evening school. The Komsomol [Young
Communist] environment didn’t satisfy me. It opened no doors of real knowledge.
Everyday life aroused a protest in my soul. There was a vacuum and it’s not in
the nature of life to accept a vacuum. One thing has to take the place of
another. Those were long nights! I read the Russian classics in
pre-revolutionary editions — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gogol. I became aware of
Solovyov. Also I began to take an interest in religious art. I began to see
myself as a believer. I was about 20. I can’t give an exact date that I
realized I was a believer, but I had a feeling of providence, a surge of
inspiration. Tolstoy had a deep impact. In time Dostoyevsky became more
important to me. Finally I understood it is neither Tolstoy nor Dostoyevsky who
provide the fundamentals of faith but the Gospels.”

Was it a foregone
conclusion that you would be Orthodox? “For some time it was not clear
what kind of Christian I would become. I found attractive features not only in
Orthodoxy but Catholicism and in Protestant churches too. The Catholic Church
struck me as having a more modern outlook and I still see it as offering a
pattern for renewal in Orthodoxy and want to do my utmost to bring the two
churches closer together, to help find a common language. I have many Catholic
friends and knew the Catholic cardinal in Lithuania when he was still a bishop
living in exile in a village on the frontier. Visiting Protestant churches in
Leningrad, I was impressed by their way of preaching and praying. Preaching in
the Orthodox Church is often very poor. On the other hand the climate of
Protestantism seemed to me too severe, too bitter. The Orthodox Church was more
familiar, the natural environment for a Russian intellectual. The Orthodox
Church is in possession of basic cultural values. It is linked with our
literature, our music, our art, our philosophy. It is a rich tradition, and
wide. It has produced such saints as Sergei of Radonezh and Seraphim of Sarov.
Orthodoxy is the source of Russian culture. The final choice of Orthodoxy was
quite conscious. From that choice came the decision to apply for a place in the
Leningrad seminary. For a time while studying I was secretary to Metropolitan
Nikodim who also had a profound ecumenical spirit. He had been the Russian
Orthodox observer at the Second Vatican Council and knew both Pope John XXIII
and Paul VI.”

And then? “I went from
the seminary into the Theological Academy where I wrote a study of Solovyov’s
ethics. After ordination I served in a parish on the outskirts of Leningrad,
then came to the Holy Trinity Cathedral at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, and
from there went to a parish near the Finnish border. Then came my accident . .
. “

I asked about the situation
of eastern-rite Catholics in the Ukraine.

“There is no
structural change so far. The Uniate Church is still not legally recognized.
There is progress in the sense that the Ukrainian Catholics are no longer
pursued by the police — in other words the ‘progress’ of a husband who hasn’t
beaten his wife in recent days. It is an issue still in the control of the Ukrainian
government, not Moscow. My guess is that significant change in the Ukraine will
only occur when the present Ukrainian leadership is replaced.”

He is deeply engaged in
helping raise money for church charity work, an area of life from which believers
used to be banned and which he also sees as the natural environment for
ecumenism. “On May 16 we had a concert — ?Charity, Ecology and Beauty’ —
at the Bolshoi Theater. Orthodox, Baptist and Adventist choirs were the main
attractions. Imagine such a thing in the Bolshoi! The concert will be repeated
in several other cities.”

The next day he took me to
a Baptist concert to raise money for a school for deaf children. The recital
was in the auditorium of the Moscow Institute for Civil Aviation in the Sokol
district of northwest Moscow, the neighborhood of the school. Every seat was
filled. In the lobby, people were lined up to buy a paperback edition of the
New Testament at ten rubles a copy.

“Thanks be to
God,” said a Baptist pastor from the stage, “we live in a time when
we can not only speak about charity but act on charity.” He described the
happiness of some handicapped children to whom wheelchairs had just been given.
Various hymns were sung, including “If you want to know the reason, it’s
Jesus,” and “Were you There When They Crucified My Lord.” When
the choir sang the Lord’s Prayer, everyone in the audience stood up. An
official from the Children’s Fund thanked the musicians, a church orchestra
from Finland, for their role in the concert. “You are helping to open a
stream of charity and mercy that will flow into a river of goodness on behalf
of children needing help.”

Walking back to the Metro
after the concert, I mentioned to Father Mark my impressions of a Pamyat member
who I had seen haranguing a crowd on Moscow’s Arbat Street, a pedestrian
boulevard in central Moscow where spontaneous debates occur in the spirit of
Speakers’ Corner at London’s Hyde Park. Founded in 1980, Pamyat (remembrance)
originally was a movement with the goal of saving monuments of Russian culture,
but the last few years it has taken an anti-Semitic turn. The speaker on Arbat
Street charged Jews with the creation of the police state, the annihilation of
national identity, the subversion of culture, even the high rate of alcoholism
and the Chernobyl disaster. Religious persecution in the thirties was blamed on
the one Jew (the word means a nationality rather than a religion in the USSR)
in Stalin’s Politburo, Yamelyan Yaroslavsky, who headed the League of Militant
Godless. In a television interview one Pamyat activist denied he was
anti-Semitic: “I like the Jews, at least the ones who leave the country.
Let them study Hebrew and go to Israel. It is only the ones who stay here that
I don’t like.”

The anti-Semites are often
Orthodox Christians, said Father Mark. He recounted an exchange between a woman
on the editorial staff of Science and Religion magazine, a boy of ten,
and the boy’s father, an Orthodox priest. It was clear to the editor from
comments the boy made that he was anti-Semitic. She said to him, “Did you
know that Jesus was a Jew?” The boy, shocked, turned to his father and
said, “Is it true?” The father responded, “Jesus Christ is the
second person of the Holy Trinity. You cannot speak of him belonging to any
race.” The editor then said to the boy, “Did you know that Mary, the
mother of Jesus, was also a Jew?” Again the boy asked his father, “Is
it true?” This time his father looked sad and answered only with
reluctance. “Yes, unfortunately it is true.”

I asked how anti-Jewish
prejudice can be overcome. “In 1905, a year of pogroms in Kiev, many
honest priests went out with the cross in hand, blocking the way of thugs and
calling on the people not to participate. Sometimes the priests succeeded,
sometimes they were victims themselves. All this was an indication of strong
will and belief in goodness. If such things happened today in Moscow or Kiev, I
don’t think we would find many priests blocking the way. It isn’t only that
there are fewer priests or that the few priests we have are without conscience.
But in 1905 the Church had authority in society. Now it doesn’t have such
influence. Fewer people would stop and listen. Fewer would respect a priest.
Even so, of course, the Church has to take a lead and speak with authority on
such matters.”

To what extent is
nationalism a factor among Russian Orthodox Christians? “You find two
trends. There are those who prefer the Church to remain independent and there
are those with strong nationalistic views who would like the Russian Orthodox
Church to become the official state Church as it used to be. But the situation
of the Orthodox Church before the revolution was not one that benefitted either
Church or society — in some ways it was even worse than after the revolution
when believers were treated like criminals. Before the abdication of the czar,
the Church was deprived of an independent role in influencing the life of the
people. It was really a department of the government. One has to say that the
Church herself doesn’t like to be separated from the state. Even in the time of
Stalin, there were bishops eager to glorify the tyrant, to describe him as a
man sent by God. In an old issue of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate
you will find it said, ‘Stalin is an ideal man, a pattern to be followed by
everyone.’ Even under those conditions, the Church tried not to be separated
from the state. This tendency has existed throughout Christian history and it
exists now. When Khrushchev criticized Stalin, the Church was silent. The
reason — totalitarianism is imbued into the cells of our lives. We have had it
for so long it is hard to imagine anything else.”

Are there any indications
of change? “Public criticism of Stalin by bishops occurs but is still
exceptional. There was a two-hour film produced last year by the Publishing
Department of the Moscow Patriarchate that, in a section on church history,
shows the destruction of churches, the burning of icons and the faces of some
of the bishops and theologians, like Pavel Florensky, who were killed or died
in prison camps. We begin to name the victims but are still hesitant to name
the executioners. It is the Patriarch that needs to do this, not Gleb Yakunin
or Mark Smirnoff.”

Attending the Sunday
Liturgy at Moscow’s Church of the Archangel Gabriel, I happened to meet Yuri
Alexandrovich Aksyonov, an artist. He brought me to a nearby Indian restaurant,
the Djaltarang, where some of the congregation gather for a late breakfast together
every Sunday after the service. Over Easter cake, fried Indian bread, cherries
and coffee, they talked about restoration work they had been involved in doing
at the Optina Pustyn, a monastery recently returned to the Orthodox Church.
Vera Sidorenko, a young architect in the group, was searching for high-quality
bricks to be used in the reconstruction of the monastery bell tower.

Two nights later I met some
of them again at Yuri Alexandrovich’s studio, a large basement room with an
icon corner and many paintings and photographs revealing a passionate love of
Orthodoxy. One painting was of Moscow’s Savior Cathedral, blown up in 1931.
Another was of a staretz at the Holy Trinity Monastery to whom many go
for confession and spiritual direction.

Vera’s husband, Yuri
Leonidovich, turned out to be a conscientious objector. Luckily, his refusal of
military service resulted in his becoming an outpatient at a Moscow psychiatric
clinic rather a prisoner, the fate of many others who have taken a similar
stand.

“There is a stamp in
my identity papers that I am under psychiatric care,” he said. “This
makes it hard to get a job and that causes financial problems. On the other
hand I have more time for the things I really like to do.”

One of those present at
Yuri’s studio was Irina Fedonova, a young woman directing the first children’s
church choir in Moscow. Formerly children were not allowed to sing in choirs,
still less to have one of their own. Her choir had made its debut three weeks
before, on Easter.

I had a long talk with
Sergei Markus, an editor of a recently founded “informal” magazine, Slovo
(Word). In 1984 Markus had been sentenced to a three-year term for
“willingly spreading falsehoods” against the Soviet state and system.
At the time he was a department head at Moscow’s Kolomenskoye Museum where he
organized a youth club which discussed ancient Russian culture. His early
release from prison in 1986 was due to his issuing a public statement of regret
for the contact he had maintained with western journalists.

I asked if articles in Slovo
touch on abuse of believers’ rights. “One of our projects is to
publish an article by Father Dimitri Dudko about his years in labor camps and
prison.”[23]

Markus spoke about the
profound interest the marxist philosopher Ivan Timofeyevich Frolov takes in
religion. “Frolov is one of the people whose ideas have most influenced
Gorbachev. He was the other person with Gorbachev and Kharchev when Orthodox
leaders were received in the Kremlin last year. He heads the Soviet Philosophical
Society and does a monthly television program broadcast from Gorki House called
‘Philosophically Speaking.’ Metropolitan Pitirim is among those who have
participated in this program. I think it is the first time a church leader has
had such an opportunity to teach millions about the Christian vision. It’s
remarkable. I started reading Frolov while I was in prison. If you want to
understand the connection between perestroika and religion, study
Frolov. Read his book, Perspectives of Man. He is really the philosopher
of perestroika. Kharchev may be replaced but Frolov will remain and he
is far more important, someone very close to Gorbachev.[24] One of Frolov’s main points is that marxism must be an open
rather than a closed system. A dogmatic marxism can’t know the real situation
in the world. Marxists have to be constantly ready to revise their view in the
light of reality. They must take seriously, for example, the work of Christian
authors like Solovyov and Teilhard de Chardin.”

I asked him his opinion of
Kharchev. “Kharchev gave two good interviews to Ogonyok —
brilliant. But at other times he said whatever comes into his mind without
serious reflection. Though he was an ambassador before, a diplomat, at times he
seems to lack diplomatic qualities. It was nonsense for the government to
appoint him to head such a crucial ministry. He is someone new to religion and
doesn’t understand it. He is sometimes like Boris Yeltsin — popular but not
deep. He has a tendency to make promises but then ignore them. An Orthodox
bishop from the Ukraine asked him to help arrange the return of a cathedral. No
problem, Kharchev said, it will be taken care of. But it wasn’t taken care of.
The local Council for Religious Affairs told the bishop once again, ‘No problem
— you can’t have it.’ You get the impression that Kharchev says what you want
to hear but then forgets about it.”

What about Orthodox
response? “Metropolitan Pitirim criticized Pamyat. He supported the
patriotic and cultural aspect but disagreed with their ideas on national
struggle and their attitude toward Jews. He said that to believers there is
neither Greek nor Jew but all are one in Jesus Christ.”

What is the role of Slovo?
“We see ourselves inside the Church. We aren’t dissidents. In Slovo,
we don’t want to criticize but to publish material we hope will be helpful to
intellectuals who think the faithful are only babushkas. We are publishing
writings from the Church Fathers and articles introducing Orthodoxy. Father
Vladimir Tumkoff wrote an article on the history of the Church. Father Yuri
Florovsky provided an essay on Holy Wisdom. We have published liturgical
material about Father Amvrosi of the Optina Pustyn who was canonized last year.
We published an article by Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk on religion and
television. One author wrote about Rachmaninoff. Our general aim is to show
that Orthodoxy isn’t just something from the past but that our God is an
eternal God. Believers are not people looking into the past but into the
future. The future depends on our spiritual vitality. Without dukhovnost there
can be no perestroika.”

In 1914, a guide led a
scholar through the forests and swamps of northern Russia to the shore of a
small lake. In log houses at the water’s edge he found a community of Old
Believers and retaining ancient customs and traditions and still speaking the
Russian language of the Seventeenth Century.[26] Nor were such remnants of old Russia entirely swept away by the
Revolution. In the 1950s two Old Believer monasteries and four convents were
discovered in the Siberian forest.[27] Other Old Believer communities disguised themselves as collective
farms. Now, under the new conditions of Soviet life, Old Believer churches are
being registered, but how many Old Believers there are, no one knows. Estimates
start at two million. Some think there are five times that number.

Despite different
theological convictions, the Old Believers have much in common with America’s
Amish. Both are witnesses to life as it was in an earlier time and to a faith
refusing compromise with secularism. In their respective countries both are
often admired, even envied, though few imagine taking the giant step away from
modern life that joining them would require.

Old Believer origins go
back to a reform movement during the reign of Patriarch Joseph (1642-1652).
Among those working to restore the purity of Church service books were Nikon
(then Metropolitan of Novgorod) and a married priest serving in Moscow,
Avvakum. As a result of their work, new service books were printed in the
1640s.

In 1652, following the wish
of Czar Alexis, Nikon was elected Patriarch of Moscow. In 1653 he ordered
Russians to emulate Greek usage in all cases where Greek ritual differed from
their own. Among the changes ordered, one in particular provoked a storm of
protest and resistance: Nikon demanded that henceforth members of the Russian
Orthodox Church must cross themselves with three fingers rather than two. To a
people profoundly sensitive to symbols and gestures, this was a betrayal of a
tradition handed down to them from the apostles. In 1666, the dispute became a
schism.

“It was common in the
past,” Nicolas Zernov writes, “to see in this schism a proof of the .
. . backwardness of the Muscovites before their Westernization in the
Eighteenth Century. The cause was said to be an obscure dispute about details
of ritual, and the Patriarch’s opponents were stigmatized as narrow-minded
fanatics who preferred to split the Church rather than to consent to minor
alterations. In reality there were serious political considerations which
prompted the Patriarch to start his campaign for the unification of the
Muscovite and Greek and Ukrainian rituals and no less weighty reasons for
repudiation of his reform.

“[At the time]
Russians were the only independent nation among the Orthodox and they received
urgent appeals for help both from the Christians suffering under the Turks and
their kinsfolk oppressed by the Poles in the Ukraine. . . . The Russian
government, now planning a campaign for the liberation of Eastern Christians .
. . required unity and concord among all Orthodox. . . . For the sake of this
mission they were ready to sacrifice the beloved customs of Moscow Orthodoxy. .
. . [The Patriarch’s opponents] were convinced that the Greeks and Ukrainians,
deprived of political freedom and obliged to train their clergy in Roman
Catholic and Protestant seminaries, no longer preserved the authentic
tradition. Recent research has preserved the Old Believers’ assertion.”[28]

Among those who sought to
convince the Patriarch that the Greeks had been less careful than the Russians
in preserving tradition was Archpriest Avvakum. Unfortunately opposition only
hardened Nikon’s resolve. He successfully called upon the czar to enforce his
rulings. Avvakum responded by declaring Patriarch Nikon and his followers,
including the czar, apostates. Those who clung to the old ways were ruthlessly
persecuted. Many were tortured and martyred.

“What can be done
about it?” Avvakum wrote. “Let them all suffer bitterly for Christ’s
sake. So be it, with God’s help. It is fitting to suffer for the Christian
faith. This archpriest formerly enjoyed discourse with the great, and now, poor
wretch, let him delight in suffering to the end. For it has been written:
Blessed is not he who begins but he who perseveres to the end.”[29] After many years of exile in the Siberian wilderness and fifteen
years in a subterranean prison, Avvakum was burned.

Old Believers sought refuge
in remote places — the arctic north and the Siberian forests — or outside
Russia. Today Old Believers are found in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany,
Argentina, Brazil, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.

In Russia the initial
persecution of Old Believers gradually eased and many of them became
prosperous. In 1791, Old Believers were permitted to build a church near
Moscow. After the Revolution in 1917, persecution resumed.

Old Believers in Lithuania

In Vilnius I met Ivan
Isayevich Egorov, chairman of the Supreme Council of Christian Old Believers in
Lithuania. He looked remarkably like Leo Tolstoy. I asked him how Old Believers
had come to the Baltic region. “In the first years of persecution those
who could not withstand torture either sought refuge in the wilderness or escaped
the country. You find Old Believers here, in Latvia, in Poland, in Germany and
other European countries — even in Turkey and across the ocean. The
Lithuanians accepted us warmly. Our first Lithuanian parish was founded in
1710. It is still alive. We came to Vilnius in 1830. At present we have 50
communities in this territory.”

What sort of government
does the Church have? “We are very democratic. Democracy is nothing new
for us. We have an Council so that when a decision has to be made, we can hear
all voices. The Council serves our material needs. Council members include
pastors and delegates from all parishes. The Council publishes church
literature and our calendar, makes arrangements for candles and prayer and
music books.”

Will the schism ever end?
“I believe it will. We have friendly relations with the Orthodox Church. A
big step toward reconciliation was taken by the Russian Orthodox Church at its
Council in 1971 when anathemas proclaimed against Old Believers in 1666 were
withdrawn. It was recognized that Old Believers are going on the right way and
that traditions we have preserved are correct. There have been articles on this
subject in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. Metropolitan Pitirim
has published books for us and these have had the blessing of Patriarch Pimen.
Several Old Believers were guests at the Council last June at the Holy Trinity
Monastery. The Council called for collaboration between our churches. Our
Council the following month sent a positive response. A dialogue is coming and
we look forward to it. We see the Russian Orthodox Church changing for the
better. We are moving toward each other. Old Believers have preserved the
rules, tradition and faith unchanged and this is now valued. There is more
friendship and understanding.”

Does this mean Old
Believers are changing? “We will stick to our ways. We are obstinate
still.”

Is perestroika having
any impact on life for Old Believers? “We are not being persecuted. We
feel more at ease. We can register our churches without difficulty. Recently we
were received by the Lithuanian Council of Ministers where we put forward our
requests. We have opened two churches. In Dukstas we received an abandoned
Orthodox Church. In Utena we were allowed to build a new church. We will have
another church in Silute — the local authorities have promised us a building.
To better train our pastors, we hope to open a seminary in Riga. We have large
communities there — about 25,000 believers. At present all our education takes
places little by little within the church, which means it is only old people
who fully know the rites, the traditions, the music. But there are more and
more young believers with a higher education. Some are ready to attend a
seminary. Also we plan to start a magazine which we will call The City of
Kitezh. This comes from our legend of a holy city, Kitezh, miraculously
preserved under the waters of the Svetloyar Lake [200 km northeast of Gorky].
In Kitezh the old way of life and worship has continued without pause.
Occasionally the city rises from the water and appears to the devout.”

Are young people attracted
to become Old Believers? “In my parish we have 300 young people. This
speaks for itself.”

What happened to Old
Believers in Stalin’s time? “It was the same for us as for others. Many
thousands of Lithuanians were sent to Siberia. About ten Lithuanian Old
Believer pastors were exiled. Several of them perished, some managed to come
back. It was a difficult time.”

He urged me to visit the
Old Believers in Moscow. “They have a similar tradition, only more
monastic. Now we have a Metropolitan, Alimpy, whose office is there. And you
will see a beautiful church and belfry. In the thirties the authorities wanted
to destroy it. The bishop said they must shoot him first. Stalin received him
personally and asked him what he wanted. The bishop said, ‘Don’t destroy our
church, it is an historic structure.’ Stalin said, ‘I know your church. When I
look from the Kremlin, I see it has the tallest belfry. Let it remain.”

Old Believers in Moscow

The Old Believers’
Pokrovsky (Protection of the Mother of God) Cathedral, built in 1791, is next
to the Rogozhski Cemetery in the east of Moscow. Only one Russian church is
larger, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Leningrad. The church is often filled
to capacity — up to 10,000 — but my visit was on a weekday morning when the
worshippers were few and elderly.

Inside the air smelled of
linseed oil. On the far side of the church scaffolding supported artisans
restoring the dark ceiling. The church’s amber floor was covered with wide
wooden boards like a ship’s deck. The absence of gold and silver gave the
church a gentle and yet austere character. The cathedral walls were lined with
icons — 2500, I later discovered, some dating from the Thirteenth Century. The
dominant colors were cream, golden yellow, dark red, and many shades of brown
and green.

Stepping outside the
church, I was welcomed by Romil Khrustalev, chairman of the Church Council and
assistant to Metropolitan Alimpy of Moscow and All Russia, Primate of the
Russian Old Rite Orthodox Church. Romil Khrustalev had a long thick beard just
beginning to grey.

We had hardly introduced
ourselves when an official from the Council for Religious Affairs happened to
arrive by car, delivering some freshly printed posters showing Moscow’s Church
of the Savior as it looked before its destruction in 1931. A campaign for its
reconstruction was underway in Moscow. As the official approached, Romil gave
him the Easter greeting, “Christ is risen.” “Truly he is
risen,” the visitor responded.

Not waiting for me to ask
questions, Khrustalev had questions for me: “Are you as believer? What
Church? Do you come from a family of believers?” And then a question that
I have thought about often since it was asked: “Are you sensitive to
symbols?” I said I was or I wouldn’t be Orthodox, but I pressed him to
explain why he had asked.

“Our faith is tied to
sacred symbols,” he said. “We don’t make a dramatic Protestant
difference between ‘important’ and ‘non-important’. Everything that was
sanctified by apostolic tradition is preserved by the Old Believers. This is
why we Old Believers cross ourselves in the same way that it was done at the
time of the baptism of Rus’ a thousand years ago, a tradition we are confident
goes back to the Apostolic times.

“To many people this
seems a trivial detail. What does it matter whether you join two fingers or
three when you cross yourself? But if you are sensitive to symbols then the
older way is significant because these two fingers represent the dual nature of
Christ, God and Man. It means Christ suffered as a human being but as God he
didn’t suffer. As Holy Father Kyrill of Jerusalem said, ‘Don’t be embarrassed
to identify yourself with Christ.’ When we cross ourselves, we identify
ourselves with the crucified Christ. Every gesture has profound meaning. As we
make the sign of the cross, [touching his forehead] we recall that the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity, Christ the Logos, incarnated in the body of Mary [touching
the upper belly], who sits at the right hand of the Father [touching the right
shoulder], saving us from those on the left side [touching the left shoulder]
— the heretics and sinners. And then you bow.

“These actions
symbolize the essence of Christian faith. Even an illiterate Russian who made
this sign was worshipping in the Orthodox way. Orthodoxy means the right way to
pray. But in the time of Patriarch Nikon, the symbol was changed. The three
fingers are said to represent the Holy Trinity. It is as if the Trinity was
crucified. The change was theological nonsense. Patriarch Nikon rejected the
old way. It was the major point in the controversy. It was only in 1971 that
the Patriarchal Church withdrew the anathemas against us that were proclaimed
300 years earlier. At the same time the ban of the two-finger sign of the cross
was withdrawn. They recognized its equal significance.”

I asked if there were other
differences. “We believe that only full immersion is valid in baptism. We
preserve the old style in icon painting — we don’t accept the westernized
school. We preserve the monophonic method of church chant and also we still use
hooked musical notation — we are the only ones to preserve these
customs.”

What about splits among Old
Believers? “There are three main branches. The largest, centered here, is
the Russian Old Rite Orthodox Church, the name adopted at our 1988 Council.
Before that we were called the Church of Old Believers of the Belo-Krinitsa
Hierarchy. We unite most of the Old Believers who recognize the priesthood. We
have about 150 registered parishes throughout the country. [At least as many
non-registered churches exist.] In 1963, before Khrushchev’s purges, there were
250 parishes. [He made an axe stroke motion with his hand.] In Moscow alone,
before the October Revolution, there were 40 churches of Old Believers. Today
there are six. Now the process of the revival of our parishes is underway. In
the last three years, about ten parishes have opened. We expect another 30 or
40 in the next few years.

“Then there is the
Christian Old Believers of the Pomorye Communion, sometimes called the Bezpopovtsy
Church [the Church Without Priests]. This came about a generation after the
Great Schism when the priests of the early years died out. There was no bishop
to ordain new ones. The believers accepted it as God’s will that they had no
priests. Their one sacrament is baptism. They are mainly in the Baltic region
but it also in Siberia and the Far East.

“A third branch, the Beglopopovtsy
[fugitive priests], also recognizes priests and has a normal sacramental
life. It has an independent hierarchy organized in 1923.”

What about relations with
the Russian Orthodox Church? “The reformed [Russian Orthodox] Church does
not recognize our hierarchy as valid, but part of the clergy respects us — for
example, Metropolitan Pitirim. He knows that to revive what was lost it is
necessary to have a spiritual environment. He is a great lover of the
traditions of the early Russian Orthodox Church, traditions either ignored or
forgotten, and so he has a deep respect for Old Believers. He is doing a lot to
revive the old way of singing. Our publishing departments cooperate.”

What sort of publishing?
“Before the change we could publish very little. Now we can do a lot — in
fact we are unable to fully meet the opportunity because we haven’t a large
enough staff or facilities. We are publishing service books and starting a
journal called The Church. We are preparing our theological history. We
have issued a record of our music.”

We had lunch — black
bread, pickled mushrooms and herring — in a plain room. The decoration
included a painting of one of the most prominent opponents of Patriarch Nikon,
the Boyarynia Morozova. While being dragged away in chains, she defiantly
raises her chained hand in a gesture of adherence to tradition: the index and
middle finger raised in the manner of Old Believers. Some of the bystanders
regard her with derision. Others see her as a saint. Another painting shows an
earlier moment when she was visiting the imprisoned Archpriest Avvakum.

“Since the time of
Nikon, we had a hard time,” said Romil. “In the early years many were
tortured, maimed and executed. Finally we were tolerated but we knew much
suffering right into the time of Soviet power — strange when you think that we
were persecuted by the czars! You would think we might have been regarded more
kindly by those who pulled down the czarist system.”

What is behind such
persecution? “Many people think Russian totalitarianism began with Stalin
but I believe it has its roots in Patriarch Nikon’s reforms. The portion of the
people who preferred to go on the road to democracy joined the Old Believers.
You know the parable of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s Brothers
Karamazov, the dialogue about freedom. Old Believers preferred freedom to
prestige and security. In terms of this parable, we took Christ’s side, not the
Inquisitor’s. The civil service had to take the government’s side. [he gestured
a salute] They had to follow orders. These were the nobility — today’s apparat
— the administrative apparatus that does what it is told and says what it
is supposed to say and believes what it is required to believe. The old faith
survived mainly among those not directly dependent on the government —
merchants, farmers, cossacks. These sections of the population were mercilessly
persecuted — imprisoned, tortured, burned. It happened again in the years of
Soviet power. During the worst years the fact of being an Old Believer was
enough to lead to imprisonment. If you were a priest, it was a death sentence.

“This notorious
tradition of ruthless repression goes back to Patriarch Nikon. However much our
Peter the Great, Alexander I, Nicholas II and Stalin differ from each other,
they were all totalitarians. But it isn’t only the state rulers we should
consider. The Orthodox priests like to say that the purges began under Stalin.
They don’t like to remember that the Orthodox Church persecuted the Old
Believers. The very fact that the government now desperately seeks to inspire
the creative soul of the people has a mysterious connection with the faith of
Old Believers. Old Believers have never followed the official line. An Old
Believer has always been independent and therefore someone disliked by
officialdom. On the other hand the official Church has always served the
rulers.”

But the Orthodox were also
ruthlessly persecuted under Stalin. “Yes, they have their martyrs and their
history of suffering. But when Stalin made his peace with them, their bishops
praised Stalin and they rode in sedans with white tires. We did not praise him
and we got no sedans. The Church of Old Believers has a history of true Russian
freedom. This refusal to bend to state power was the major reason for the
elimination of whole segments of the population — the very portion of the
population we are now called upon to restore! As a result of repression the Old
Believers’ Church today has lost its foundation within the population.”

Do you find many converts?
“Many people who are now finding their way into the Orthodox Church don’t
see the difference between the two churches except they know it is easier to be
in the patriarchal Church. To know and understand the difference between the
two churches requires a major effort of mind and intellect. It requires study.
But even if you are willing to study, what do you read? There is nothing in the
library, nothing in the book store. This is the context of the present crisis
for Old Believers. Nonetheless there are those who are drawn to us, but it
isn’t easy for them to enter because there are many strict rules in our
Church.”

For example? “Beards.
God has given beards to men — we should not cut them off. Some object. Perhaps
his wife disapproves. Perhaps he thinks he will look older or that people will
make fun of him. But until he is willing to let his beard grow we do not accept
him for communion. Also he can be refused the burial service. These strict rules
are the canonical traditions we have received from the ancient Church and which
we maintain and live by. There are many whose way of life makes it difficult.
There are those who come to our Church who cannot be completely accepted
because their civil life was so at odds with the Church. So, apart from the
factor of repression, you can understand why our Church isn’t large. On the
other hand, it is a miracle that it survived at all! The church you visited
today was built just after a period of severe repression. But since that time
it was not closed even one day. Nor was it damaged by the Moscow fire that
drove Napoleon back to France. In that time this was a settlement outside of
Moscow, Rogozhskoye.”

And what about the Soviet
period? “Neither was the church closed in the time of Stalin. Once in the
thirties they tried to turn it into a youth club but the believers stayed
inside and refused to leave. They remained day and night, praying to God, until
the authorities changed their mind. In that period we had only one priest
serving here. This church has been here three hard centuries and it has been a
place of prayer every day and everything inside has survived. In the Stalin
time they damaged the bell tower and the Church of the Dormition in its base

[the tower stands near church]

but even here there is a kind of miracle because
it was their intention to destroy the tower. They put dynamite charges around
the base and these were exploded but the tower, although cracked, withstood the
blast. It was built in 1913, and built with care, not the kind of building that
is done today. So they made the church into a storeroom and painted over the
icons. But much survived under the paint. We are in the last stages of
restoring the icons. At that time they also closed our Cathedral of the
Nativity of Christ. It was a place with the most wonderful acoustics. Now the
state has taken responsibility and has started the restoration work. We
anticipate its return.”

If Old Believers were so
persecuted, how was it possible for the cathedral to be built in 1791?
“Despite the persecution, large numbers wouldn’t submit. Also a large part
of Russian capital was controlled by Old Believers. They were a major force in
society. It was recognized that toleration was better than persecution. In the
last century, it is estimated that 40 percent of Russian capital was in the
hands of Old Believers.”

Is there appreciation of
Old Believers in the wider society? “The poet Alexander Blok and some
other writers have shown an interest. But I think the writer who best
understands the truth about Old Believers is Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In his
‘Letter from America’ written in 1975, he wrote, ‘It may seem strange that, in
order to prepare for the Twenty-first Century, we must first repent for our great
sin committed in the Seventeenth Century. But the greatness or smallness of our
sin is not due to its antiquity or the number of surviving victims but because
of the extent and meaning of the crime committed. No one can deny that a crime
was committed. Isn’t it up to Christians to prove that without repentance, life
is not possible? Without repentance there can be no movement toward the light.
But the mystical meaning of repentance for a 300-year-old sin is difficult to
predict. It extends beyond Church politics and practice. It may even open
another direction in the history of our country . . . ‘[30]

“What Solzhenitsyn
insists is that, if the people remain blind to Old Believers and what was done
against us, then the shadow of that great sin will continue to enlarge. It was
the starting point for the death of Russia.”

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Eastern-Rite Ukrainian
Catholics

The ecumenical movement in
the USSR has mainly occurred either at the very top or in prisons and labor
camps where believers from different confessions found themselves suffering
side by side. In general each community of believers has done its best to ignore
the others, always remembering the sins committed against its ancestors by the
ancestors of those in other churches and religions. Moslems still remember the
slaughter done by Crusaders when they captured Jerusalem in 1099. Orthodox
recall with bitterness the sacking of Constantinople in 1203 by Catholic
Crusaders and the plundering of churches that followed. Nor is it forgotten
that, with the fall of Kiev at Tatar hands, Catholic warriors attacked the
Orthodox in the name of the Pope. Poland’s King Kasimir regarded his campaign
to take Orthodox Galicia, once part of Kievan Rus’, as a holy crusade. In the
Fourteenth Century much of the area now composing the Ukraine came under Polish
rule. A long and often bitter struggle ensued to bring the Orthodox into the
Catholic Church.

In 1596, at the Union of
Brest Litovsk, a number of Orthodox bishops, including the Metropolitan of
Kiev, linked themselves with Rome rather than Moscow. Rome permitted the
Uniates, as they were called, to retain the eastern-rite Liturgy, use of the
Slavonic language in church, and the married clergy.

Beginning in the
Seventeenth Century a process of Russian-Ukrainian union began which led to the
return of the Metropolitan of Kiev to the Russian Orthodox Church. But in the
western territory, still under Polish rule, the Uniates became deeply rooted.

The western Ukraine, with
its Uniate Catholic population, was annexed by the Soviet Union in September
1939. Large numbers of believers suffered in the first brief period of Soviet
rule, experienced new cruelties under the German occupation that began in the
spring of 1941, and endured additional waves of persecution when the Red Army
regained the territory in 1944.

In 1946 the Ukrainian
Catholic Church was merged with the Russian Orthodox Church at the Council of
Lvov. In the view of the Russian Orthodox Church it was an action fulfilling
Jesus’ teaching that “all may be one.”[31]

From the Ukrainian Catholic
point of view, the Council of Lvov was no Council and there was no
reconciliation. Shortly before it met, all their bishops had been imprisoned,
charged with collaborating with the Germans despite numerous actions of
resistance to the Nazis and the hiding of many Jews. Many priests and believers
refused to accept the merger. Regarded by the state authorities as members of
an illegal church, a period of intense repression followed that resulted in the
closing of hundreds of churches, mass arrests and the creation of a Catacomb
Church. Not all priests and believers openly resisted. Many superficially
conformed, seeing it as the only way to survive.

During the two periods of
Communist rule, Uniates report, ten bishops, 1400 priests, 800 nuns and
thousands of lay people perished and many thousands more endured a nightmarish
life in labor camps.

The most prominent prisoner
was Archbishop Joseph Slipyj, head of the Lvov Diocese, the only bishop sent to
the camps who came out alive. “I had to suffer imprisonment by night,
secret court rooms, endless interrogations and spying upon me, moral and physical
mistreatment and humiliation, torture and enforced starvation,” he later
wrote. “As a prisoner for the sake of Christ I found strength throughout
my own Way of the Cross in the realization that my spiritual flock, my own
native Ukrainian people, all the bishops, priests and faithful were walking
beside me on the same path. I was not alone.” Witnesses recall him wearing
rags and his feet in bandages while at a camp at Inta, near the Arctic Circle.
“Made to march in deep snow at dead of night,” recalls a fellow
prisoner, “he collapsed. A guard forced him up with his rifle butt. Again
he fell and could not rise even under the guard’s brutality.”

In the time of Pope John
XXIII, he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union. In 1963 he arrived in Rome,
limping from frostbite. Consecrated a cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1965, he died
in Rome in 1984. During his years in Rome he founded the Ukrainian Catholic
University and built the Cathedral of Saint Sophia on the Via Bocca.

During the Millennium
celebration in Kiev in 1988, I spoke with an Orthodox priest who shares his
apartment with an underground Catholic priest. He said that four or five
million Ukrainians are eastern-rite Catholics. There are eight Uniate bishops
and more than 2000 priests. He estimated that five percent of the clergy have a
“double obedience” — when the Orthodox bishop tells one of these
priests to move, he cannot do it until he gets permission from the Catholic
bishop, and vice versa.

I asked how the Uniate and
Orthodox liturgy differed. Only in details, he said. Uniates use the Orthodox
ritual but pray for Pope John Paul II rather than Patriarch Pimen. “The
big difference is not liturgical but political and cultural. Part of the glue
is strong Ukrainian nationalism.”

The priest praised
Metropolitan Filaret for moving slowly at the parish level. When an old priest
of Uniate loyalties dies, he said, the Metropolitan replaces him with an
Orthodox pastor. The new pastor introduces changes slowly and carefully,
explaining them one by one so that the congregation can move together.

A Catholic Ukrainian,
however, strongly disagreed. “Uniate sentiment is strong,” he said,
“and our resolve is growing. There is irritation with Metropolitan Filaret
for not accepting the Ukrainian Catholic Church and regarding it only as a
political and nationalistic movement, though it’s true we won’t make the kinds
of compromises the Russian Orthodox Church has made with the government. The
result is that we are the largest illegal religious body within the Soviet
Union. While there are no more deportations, we are still paying the price of
following our conscience.”[32]

In the months following the
Millennium, Uniate priests began emerging from the underground and in 1989 the
Ukrainian Catholic Church began a vigorous campaign for legal recognition.

In May 1989 Metropolitan
Volodymyr Sterniuk, the Catholic Archbishop of Lvov, received Father Mykhailo
Nyzkohuz, formerly a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, into the Ukrainian
Catholic Church. The following day his parishioners in the village of Stara Syl
took the same step. A week later government representatives, accompanied by 18
Orthodox priests, came to the village in an effort to obtain the church keys
and expel Father Nyzkohuz. An estimated 1500 faithful blocked their way and
retained the church.

On May 16 several Catholic
bishops began a hunger strike in Moscow after failing to meet with a member of
the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. Three days after the hunger strike began,
they were received by Yuri Khrystoradnov, head of the Council of the Supreme
Soviet, who told them that the problem had to be “resolved with the
authorities in the Ukraine and that the Russian Orthodox Church was a roadblock
in the legalization of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.”

On May 24 other Ukrainians
began a rotating fast in front of the offices of the Council for Religious
Affairs and on Moscow’s Arbat Street. Four days later, at the Dynamo Stadium in
the Ukraine, 8000 people participated in a rally for the Church’s legalization.
On June 18 an estimated 150,000 Ukrainian Catholics participated in public
services in many towns and villages of the western Ukraine. Bishop Pavlo
Vasylyk and four priests who were to have presided in Ivano-Frankivsk were
detained by militia but a fifth priest, Father Mykola Simkailo, managed to be
present and led the service which an estimated 100,000 people attended. Father
Simkailo was later charged with disturbing public order. On the same day
uniformed and plain clothes police attacked and beat several participants who
were attending a service on Vladimir Hill in Kiev.

In a statement addressed to
the Congress of Peoples Deputies in Moscow, Ukrainian Catholics said that so
far they had been left untouched by changes going on in the USSR: “The
years of perestroika and the accompanying liberalization in Soviet
society has not affected the Ukrainian Catholic Church and its believers. With
the emergence of a section of the clergy from the underground, the repression
has increased, especially in the last year.” Clergy had been subjected to
arrests and fines as well as “slanderous attacks” from both state
officials and clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church. “When the tens of
thousands of believers turned to the USSR Supreme Soviet” to demand
recognition of their Church “the authorities began to transfer Ukrainian
Catholic churches to the Russian Orthodox Church.”

“Dear Deputies,
freedom of worship in one’s chosen religion is a fundamental human rights
recognized in all basic international acts and by Article 52 of the USSR
Constitution. But believers of the Ukrainian Catholic Church are deprived of
this right.” They called on the Deputies to rehabilitate both the
Ukrainian Catholic Church and the Autocephalous Orthodox Church, recognizing
them as victims of Stalin, to return churches and church property to their
rightful owners, to recognize as a criminal act the persecution of believers,
and to appoint a commission “to formulate new laws on religion in
accordance with international legal norms.”

Unable to ignore
sign-carrying demonstrators on the streets, the Party First Secretary from
Ivano-Frankivsk spoke at the July meeting of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party about the “reactionary essence of the Uniate
movement” which he said was nothing more than “a cover for
nationalism.” (In late September, Vladmir Scheribitsky, the First
Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party, a strong opponent of perestroika
and no friend of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, was forced out of the
Central Committee.)

From late July, 28
Ukrainian Catholics stood with signs outside the Moscow hotel where the World
Council of Churches’ Central Committee was meeting. When not in conversation
with participants in the WCC meeting, the Ukrainians sang hymns and prayed the
rosary.

On September 17, 150,000
people participated in a two-hour outdoor Mass in Lvov before marching to the
square in front of the Cathedral of Saint George, a church turned over to the
Russian Orthodox Church in 1946. The text of a telegram to Gorbachev was read
aloud calling on him to legalize the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Similar public
services were announced for October by Ivan Hel, head of the Committee for the
Defense of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. After darkness fell, city residents
turned off their lights and put candles in the windows to commemorate the
millions of victims of Stalinism and Soviet rule.

One of the members of the
Russian Orthodox Church who joined in the campaign for recognition of the
Ukrainian Catholic Church was Alexander Ogorodnikov[33]. He had been at a labor camp in the Perm region with Stepan
Khmara, a Ukrainian Catholic arrested for publishing an underground newspaper.
“It was really a death camp,” said Ogorodnikov. “There were
prisoners who starved to death. We were shut in punishment cells without heat,
warm clothes, light or space to move.” Stepan Khmara, he said, was
frequently sent to such a cell for praying on his knees. Ogorodnikov was
similarly punished for his efforts to obtain a Bible.

“I believe,” he
said, “that the fate of the Ukrainian Catholic Church depends on how
boldly the Russian Orthodox hierarchy asserts itself and its readiness to
repent of its past sins against this community of fellow believers.”

While in Rome December 1,
Gorbachev met for more than an hour with Pope John Paul II. Gorbachev assured
the pontiff that the forthcoming passage of the new law on freedom of
conscience would assure Catholics the “right to satisfy their spiritual
needs.” The two leaders agreed to establish diplomatic ties between the
Vatican and Moscow and the Pope expressed his readiness to visit the USSR if
“developments in the Soviet Union would enable him to accept”
Gorbachev’s invitation. In Kiev, Nokolai Kolesnik, the head of the republic’s
Council for Religious Affairs, told reporters that Ukrainian Catholic
congregations were now allowed to register and gather legally “like other
religious groups.”[34]

Catholic Lithuania

The change underway in the
Soviet Republic of Lithuania is visible on every flag pole. In May 1989 the
yellow, green and red standard was flying over government buildings in Vilnius,
worn on lapels and for sale at every news stand and department store. The
Soviet flag was nowhere to be seen.

“We have a modern
interpretation of the colors,” said my host, Jonas Stepanavichus, an
editor. “Yellow stands for an independent economy. Green represents care
for ecology. The red symbolizes international solidarity. A year ago you could
be sent to prison for several years if you displayed that flag. Last July there
was a public gathering where many people raised the banned flag. The First
Secretary of the Communist Party told the crowd that he wouldn’t speak if
people didn’t put down these flags. They wouldn’t, and he didn’t speak. Now he
is no longer First Secretary. He was replaced last October by a real reformer,
Algirdas Brauzauskas. The Second Secretary is also without his old job. Since
the elections there have been many more changes.”

What happened? “We have
a joke. The old-style elections — what were they like? It was like God saying
to Adam, Here is Eve, take her or leave her! The Eve that God gave Adam was
nice to look at but the Eve we got was never that pretty. The Lithuanian Adam
finally decided he wanted another Eve.”

The old Eve was the
Communist Party and she lost? “I wouldn’t say the Party lost but it didn’t
win. None of the Party secretaries were elected. Most of those nominated were
people who had been in power for many years. They lost. A parliamentary group
from West Germany was amazed. They said that couldn’t do such a thing in the
Federal Republic! Here we have the chance to non-elect people even if we
don’t elect anyone. To be chosen you have to get a minimum of votes. In many
districts there had to be a second election, in some places a third. It’s a
good idea. This way eventually you get leaders who respect the people. That’s
why relations between church and state are getting so much better now.”

Who is in the government?
“Communists won but not those the Party put up. The supporters of perestroika
announced their own a slate. Almost all of these people won, 36 out of 42
seats. These are all people in Sajudis [Movement]. Sajudis was
formed last year by people who reject the old ways and want change for the
better. At the beginning Sajudis had a lot of troubles but now it has
its own press and is on television for an hour or more every two weeks.”

Is religion a significant
political factor? “A major one. About 75 percent of Lithuanians are
Catholic — not less. And then there are Orthodox, Old Believers, Lutherans. At
least 90 percent of the people are religious believers of one kind or another.
One of the first actions by Algirdas Brauzauskas when he became Party Secretary
was to announce the return of the Catholic cathedral.”

How many churches are there
in Vilnius? “Thirteen Catholic Churches now, two more under restoration,
plus a new one to be built in a suburb. There are eight Orthodox churches in
the city plus two under restoration that will open later this year. We have one
Lutheran church, one Baptist church, and one synagogue. A former mosque which
will soon reopen for use as a Tatar cultural center but, if they wish, it will
become a functioning mosque again. Throughout Lithuania churches are being
returned — 189 churches were registered by Lithuanian Council for Religious
Affairs in the past year.”

Reaching the Dawn Gate, an
entrance point to ancient Vilnius, we climbed the steep stone stairs leading to
the small Mater Misericordia Chapel which houses the nation’s most revered
icon, the Ostrobramskaya. Mary is shown as the Queen of Heaven, a crowned woman
with crossed hands “standing on the moon, clothed with the sun.” The
twelve stars of Saint John the Divine’s vision surround her. The large icon is
overlaid in silver and gold. “It is a place dear to both Catholics and
Orthodox,” said Jonas. The chapel was crowded with pilgrims. There was a
quiet, intense murmur of people praying the rosary.

A few yards down the street
was the gateway to the Orthodox Cathedral. It was Sunday, the Liturgy had just
ended, and a crowd of the faithful were streaming out. Adjacent to it was
another Catholic Church, Saint Theresa’s, filled to capacity, where Mass was
being celebrated in a combination of Latin and Polish. “Vilnius was under
Polish rule from 1919 to 1939,” said Jonas, “and there are still
Poles who think of it as a Polish city. In any event, Poles feel at home here
— we get a lot of Polish visitors.”

We came to the Church of
Saint Kasimir, named for a Fifteenth Century prince who refused to take up arms
in a war he regarded as unjust. Kasimir renounced wealth, declined marriage,
died as a young man, and became one of Lithuania’s most beloved saints. The
church bearing his name, having been expropriated from believers after World
War II, was turned into the city’s Museum of Atheism. A museum guide book still
on sale in Vilnius included the following text: “The museum exhibits
reveal the reactionary essence of religion and its servants, proving on the
basis of facts how religion dealt with dissenters, persecuted science, culture
and free-thinking. . . . Religion always loyally served the interests of the
exploiters and enslavers.” The Museum of Atheism was recently closed. When
restoration work now underway is completed this summer, Saint Kasimir’s will be
a living church again. There are no plans to find new quarters for the Museum
of Atheism.

I asked Jonas how atheists
view these developments. “Practically no one takes atheism seriously. The
professors of atheism at the university — perhaps they take it seriously. But
no one takes them seriously. I know some of those teaching atheism. They are
told by their colleagues and rectors, ‘Your subject is no science! It has no
place in this school. You should leave.’ Even people in high posts of the
Communist Party have such views. Their own children and grandchildren are
baptized.”

We reached the Catholic Cathedral
in Vilnius, restored to church use on February 5. “It was taken away 40
years ago and eventually was used as an art gallery. You should have seen the
crowds in Vilnius the day of the first Mass! You could hardly move. It was a
very joyful day throughout the country. The Mass was broadcast on national
television.” Outside the front doors of the cathedral lots of religious
goods were on sale: rosaries, prayer books, holy pictures, crucifixes, statues
of Mary and photos of Pope John Paul II. Trade was brisk. Inside the church was
still crowded though Mass had ended.

“The interior
restoration is finished but some outside work is still needed. There used to be
a cross on top of the cathedral and two big statues of saints, but these were
removed one night in the early fifties. Now the state has agreed to have
duplicates made to replace those that were taken down. The old ones can’t be
returned as they were destroyed.”

The national flag was hung
in a chapel inside the cathedral. It hung as well from a trailer parked next to
the cathedral where a week-long hunger strike was in progress organized by
Lithuanian League for Liberation, advocates of the total separation of
Lithuania from the Soviet Union. “The League’s basic argument,” Jonas
explained, “is ‘We never joined the Soviet Union. It was forced on us.
Hitler and Stalin carved up eastern Europe up like a cake and we were put on
Stalin’s side of the plate.’ They want a referendum to choose between the USSR
or the EEC. Their slogans are: ‘Red Army Go Home, Russians Go Home.'”

A sign on the side of the
van expressed “solidarity with all nationalities repressed by Soviet
power: Latvians, Estonians, Poles, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, Georgians,
Armenians, and Moldavians. The same concerns Russians, who can’t be free
because they oppress other nations.” Another placard was in remembrance of
Lithuanian partisans killed by the Soviets after World War II when an attempt
was made to set up an independent Lithuania. Among the fasters’ demands posted
on the trailer were the rehabilitation of all those condemned for their
political views, recompense for those who suffered repression, and publication
of the names of those responsible for punishing such people. Most surprising
was the final demand: repentance on the part of those who took part in purges.
One of the fasters, a gifted musician, played a slow, heart-breaking sonata by
Bach on the violin, his solemn eyes pausing on the faces of those listening.

The newsstand in the main
post office nearby was selling not only the usual assortment of Communist
publications but such western newspapers as The Herald Tribune, Le Monde
and The Manchester Guardian. It was the first time I had seen them in
the Soviet Union in a location accessible to the general public.

As we walked along Lenin
Prospekt, Jonas pointed out a big statue of Lenin in the center of Lenin
Square. Lenin has an outstretched hand — a rhetorical gesture. “It so
happens that his hand is directed toward the local KGB office. What is he
saying? According to the local joke it is: ‘Either you come with me — or you
go with them!'”

“The next time you are
here,” said Jonas, “at least part of this street is likely to have
its old name back, Gediminas Prospekt. Gediminas was the founder of
Vilnius.” Many other streets that had Soviet names have already been
changed. Jonas pointed out a spot on the wall at one corner where the old
street sign had been removed leaving a bare patch. “In the Vilnius
Executive Committee,” said Jonas, “there is a special commission
responsible for re-naming streets and squares. We had one street named after a
man whose claim to fame was his role in suppressing the Lithuanian language!
The commission renamed the street after Dowkantas, a professor at Vilnius
University who did much for the Lithuanian language and culture.”

We talked about Lithuania’s
past. “It has been a hard history,” said Jonas. “In the
Eighteenth Century Lithuania was annexed by Russia. In 1830 and again in 1863,
Lithuanians rebelled. In the period of repression that followed, it was
forbidden to publish in the Lithuanian language. Russian was the only language
permitted. Sentences of those convicted for violating the ban were severe. Two
thousand people were sent to Siberia between 1864 and 1904. The policy of
russification lasted until 1905.

“Most of Lithuania was
occupied by Germany during the First World War. In 1920, the Soviet government
signed peace treaties granting independence to Lithuania as well as to Latvia
and Estonia, though a large part of Lithuania, including Vilnius was under
Polish occupation from 1919. In 1939, a secret protocol of the Hitler-Stalin
pact recognized the Baltic states as being within the Soviet sphere. The Soviet
government demanded that the Baltic states sign a mutual assistance treaty permitting
the USSR to set up military bases on their territory. The Baltic governments
acceded. What else could they do?

“On June 14, 1940, the
Red Army entered Lithuanian territory. In elections the following month, only
Soviet-sponsored candidates were allowed to stand. The Baltic Parliaments, once
elected, voted for the incorporation of their countries into the USSR,
proposals accepted by the Supreme Soviet in August. Many fled to the West,
knowing what to expect from Stalin if they stayed. An estimated 45,000
Lithuanians were arrested and executed within the first ten months of Soviet
rule. Then came the attack by Nazi Germany and the incorporation of the Baltic
Republics into the Third Reich. Several hundred thousand more died in those
years, mainly the Jews.

“With the return of
Soviet rule in the fall of 1944, there was a new wave of repression. By 1949,
half a million people from the Baltic states had been deported — only about a
quarter returned after Stalin’s death in 1953.”

Does this mean that most
Lithuanians want to get out of the Soviet Union? “For most people,”
said Jonas, “that is some kind of fantasy land. But within the Soviet
federation we want real autonomy for our republic instead of the fiction of
autonomy.”

What happened to Catholics
after the war? “Bishop Stepanavicius was forced to live in exile in an
isolated border village for 27 years. At the beginning of this year he received
permission to return to Vilnius. He hasn’t yet taken up residence here but the
building he will live in is being repaired. He will be in it before long and
Vilnius will again be the center of the Lithuanian archdiocese. He is 77. He
was consecrated 33 years ago. He steadily refused to carry out any of the
‘recommendations.’ The authorities wanted him to forbid religious instruction
of children or anyone under 18 assisting at the altar. He refused. ‘It is your
instruction,’ he said. ‘I have my own.’ That is why is was forced out of
Vilnius. He wrote many letters to the Prime Minister and the First Secretary of
the Communist Party. Their response was basically: If you won’t live by our
rules, you get nothing. The people were deeply offended by such policies. The
more courageous were sent into exile, mainly Siberia. But now things have
changed dramatically.”

Jonas introduced me to his
director, Juozas Nekrosius, chairman of the Lithuanian State Committee for
Publishing, whose office is across the street from the cathedral. On his desk
was a newspaper with a front-page story on families adopting children, an activity
in which Juozas Nekrosius is involved as chairman of the Children’s Fund of
Lithuania.

“This happened
yesterday,” he said, “and it was wonderful — many guests holding
candles standing in a circle around the children and their foster family. If
each of us lit a candle there would be no more darkness in Lithuania. It was an
important event. It grew out of our decision that not one Lithuanian orphan
will be sent out of Lithuania. A collective farm purchased a building and found
a young family which has two daughters of their own. They are taking another
six children into their family. In this case the children lost their parents in
a traffic accident. This is the beginning. We want to make it possible for more
families to take children.”

The Children’s Fund is, he
said, “helping raise the level of compassion. We hope eventually that
handicapped Lithuanian children would be able to participate in the Special
Olympics for the handicapped.”

He showed me some of the
most recently published Lithuanian books. “These come from a new imprint
called Conscript Archives from Vyturys Publishers in Vilnius. Its symbol is a
candle with a barbed-wire halo around the flame.[35] The titles in the series so far are Cattle Trains, The
‘America’ [in the sense of New World] Behind the North Pole,
Graves on the Shore of the Pechora River [in Russia’s far north], The
Second Day of Easter, We Were ‘Politicals’ [Political Prisoners], Teachers
and Students, and Three Notebooks [of a Latvian prisoner]. The
latest title is In the Land of Eternal Frost, an account of what
happened to one group of Lithuanians sent to a remote place in Siberia. The
text on the back cover speaks about ‘this school of poverty far from Lithuania,
camps of hell set up in the Stalin years, a school not yet described in
sculpture or film and about which we still know very little.'”

“It was an awful life,
beyond description, said Jonas. “They were brought to a place where no one
had ever lived. They had nothing. They had to work twenty hours a day —
disease, hunger, cold, hard labor. It was like the Nazi camps. The book’s main
concern is to tell how they managed to survive. The answer is God and religious
belief. They often were singing religious songs. They prayed every day. The
military men guarding them couldn’t understand. ‘Why are you singing?’ they
asked. ‘The only alpha and omega you have is the taiga [Siberia’s
sub-arctic forest]. This is where you die. The only question is when you will
die.’ 60,000 copies were printed. They sold out in one day even though the
price is rather high — two rubles fifty kopeks. Of this, one ruble forty
kopeks goes to the Lithuanian Fund for Culture. The money will be used to build
a monument to the victims of Stalin.”

“As a consequence a
lot of people face deep emotional problems that have to do with traumatic
events in the past,” said Juozas Nekrosius. “Every family has within
it terrible events that cannot be forgotten.”

He showed me some old
photos taken from an envelop on his desk. “This boy, Antanas Cibylskis,
was a student in his early-teens when this was taken. He wanted to become a
journalist. His dream was to travel in western Europe. A romantic soul. When he
was fifteen he was arrested and sent to the far east, sentenced to fifteen
years in labor camps. Later he got another ten year sentence. Second sentences
on completion of the first term were common. Finally he was able to return to
Lithuania but two years ago he drowned. Now we have been given a collection of
his poems. We plan to publish them.

“This poet’s life is
one story. In the Stalin years ten percent of the Lithuanian population was
sent east in cattle cars — about 200,000 people. We talk about there being two
Lithuanias — the one here, the other in Siberia. The Siberian Lithuania was
better educated than this one — those sent included many intellectuals,
teachers, priests. But the one in Siberia had a much higher death rate. Many
thousands of Lithuanians are buried in Siberia. Many were sent to an island in
the Laptev Sea, far above the Arctic Circle. It was just a piece of ice. It is
incredible that anyone survived.”

He hoped that Lithuanian
culture and history would become better known. “Few people know we exist.
Many nations and troops have marched back and forth across us but they didn’t
find out who we were. It is forgotten that Lithuania played a crucial role in
European history. We Lithuanians shielded the west from the Tatars.”

I asked about religious
publishing in Lithuania. “We have been giving assistance to publication of
Kataliku Pasaulis (Catholic World). There have been three issues so far.
Also in our World Literature series we plan to publish 90,000 copies of the
Bible. It will be the first time for a publisher in the USSR. All other
editions have been from the churches.”

How do you explain the
recent political developments in Lithuania? “Despite the presence in the
republic of many people from other nationalities, eighty percent of the
population is Lithuanian. Also Lithuania is one of the oldest nations within
the territory of the USSR. Therefore our political situation is a bit
different. There are some republics where the nationality is now a minority in
its own borders. We have favorable pre-conditions for a fresh start. We want to
expand our ties west as well as east. At the same time we want to recover our
sovereignty. That is something that cannot be given to anyone. The most
valuable quality of our new Party Secretary, Algirdas Brauzauskas, is his
ability to see things as they are. This is a big gift for us. Sometimes two men
can do more than two states. Look at Gorbachev. Or think about what Erasmus did
500 years ago. One of his principal disciples, Mikolec Letuvis, was a
Lithuanian.”

At his office nest to the
Saint Nicholas Church, we met Father Joseph Tunaitis, Catholic priest and
chancellor of the Vilnius diocese. “This is one of the oldest Catholic
churches in Lithuania,” he said, “built by the famous knight,
Gediminas, who died in 1341. Lithuania wasn’t yet baptized. It is the only
Catholic Church in Lithuania named after Nicholas and is one of the churches
that wasn’t closed in the post-war time. In 1948 many churches were taken away
but this was one of the exceptions. Now we are restoring the Gothic elements.
Special bricks have been made. All the bricks that aren’t good will be
replaced.

“Thanks be to God, the
situation is normalizing,” he said. “Not long ago we had 630
parishes. In the past year seven have been added, including the Cathedral in
Vilnius. Saint Kasimir’s will re-open and also Saint Stephen’s is promised. A
number of churches are under construction. One will be in Pashilaichiai, a
modern district of Vilnius without a church. The Council for Religious Affairs
has been quite responsive to requests to build churches in areas where there
are none. All in all, it is much better than it was, though there are still
problems — some churches and church premises that have not yet been vacated.
But the return of such buildings is promised. We wait the return of a building
being used as a residence for pilots. We will add it to the Kaunas Seminary. It
can house 150 students. Eventually we will have all the priests we need.”

What about publications?
“In general we have the right to publish but still not everything we would
like. We are preparing a Missal. We printed 10,000 New Testaments and plan to
print another 20,000. It would be more but there are problems getting paper.
The Austrian Church is sending us 150,000 New Testaments. Canadians are sending
the Old Testament. We issued a catechism in two editions, both for youth and
prayer books. We have launched a magazine, Catholic World. There are
three issues so far. Our plan is to bring it out every two weeks. Unfortunately
we are still not able to publish religious fiction, philosophical books and
works of history. We also face the problem of a shortage of creative workers.
We need to increase the number of those engaged in Christian publishing.”

What about religious
education for the larger public? “In
a religious sense, people are very poorly educated. There is still very little
we can do to change this, but we are thinking of what we can do to catechize
children. I don’t expect we will have the chance to do it in school but perhaps
the situation can develop in a way that is similar to Poland.”

Does atheist education have
much effect? “I don’t think so. Rather few would consider themselves
atheists. But the effort to discourage young people from going to church has
had its impact.”

Can the church help those
who have suffered in the period of persecution and may have serious mental or
physical problems as a result? “We now have organizations like Caritas who
try to find those who were sent to prison or to camps. Many of these people
have started special clubs and try to help each other.”

When I mentioned my
impression that the Church in Lithuania was pre-Vatican II, Father Tunaitis
smiled. “All that the Council decided is reflected in our Church. We
didn’t go quickly with everything but did it step by step. I think the results
are good. My impression is that in the western countries the process was too
rapid. Before the war, we used to think of the Dutch Church as exemplary.
Holland seemed to be the most Catholic country! Then there was the Dutch
catechism. We weren’t very happy with that. Now there is a Lithuanian bishop in
Holland. We hope he can help.”

How are relations between
clergy and people? The clergy seems rather remote. “It could be better.
Perhaps more closeness, more warmth.”

How many Lithuanians are
Catholic? “It is impossible to say. It is said that 75 percent are
Catholic but certainly we don’t have 75 percent coming to Mass. In Vilnius I
would guess about 10 percent are deeply engaged. In Kaunas it would be more. In
villages it can be less. You find rather empty churches with mainly old people
in the pews.”

Why the decline?
“Secularization is going on here as in many countries. Young people are
following western fashions and share their fascination with loud, oppressive
music. On the other hand, it is clear that some of the young people are thinking
more positively about religion, especially those who are 20-25 years old. They
are thinking in a new way. It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily becoming
Catholic. Perhaps it shows itself through interest in eastern philosophy. Some
young Lutherans visited here from Sweden and made quite an impression on young
people here. A lot depends on the talent of speakers, their gift to inspire
others. At the moment there is a group of Hindu missionaries in the city,
singing [the Hare Krishna chant] and playing a few musical instruments.”

Is there a strong
relationship between religious faith and national identity? (laughs) “For
the moment the relationship is very strong. National aspirations have helped
the church very much.”

What is the relationship
between the various churches? “It is rather official. The warmth we hear
about in the west we don’t have here, at least not yet. When it is necessary we
meet and talk. We exchange congratulations. There is no anger. On the whole we
each go on our own way.”

Do you think the Orthodox
Church receives better treatment from the political authorities than the
Catholic Church? “I don’t feel any difference. More Catholic churches were
closed but in general the Orthodox faced the same difficulties.”

I mentioned some Catholics
in the west who have come to prefer the eastern-rite Liturgy. “We see that
here as well. Some of our young Catholics are attending Liturgy at the Holy
Spirit [Orthodox] Cathedral. They like the service even though it is very long
— or perhaps because it is very long! They like the form of service.”

What about the role of
Catholics in charitable work? “Before perestroika we were not
permitted to take any role in social life. Now we have lost the habit! (laughs)
We have to learn all over again how to do it. Now we have Caritas, started by
Catholic women, and we have a Charity Society. We have a special movement to
help alcoholics. Various special groups are coming into existence. Priests are
busy responding to requests and new possibilities — going into hospitals and
prisons to hear confessions and celebrate Mass. We are free to do this now
whenever there is an invitation. But we haven’t yet the chance to start
church-sponsored hospitals, children’s centers or old-age homes.”

Do you feel secure about
the changes that perestroika has brought about? “Perhaps the time
has come. Everywhere the thirst for spiritual things is getting stronger. In
history it happens from time to time that people can’t go on living as they
did.”

Is the burden very heavy on
priests? “In Vilnius we have only 25 priests — not nearly enough. We all
celebrate Mass every day. There are so many baptisms, marriages, confessions,
funerals. I have two funerals today. I am also a notary and that takes time. I
am responsible for a lot of correspondence. Yes, it is a bit heavy.”

I noticed people lining up
in the cathedral to sign a petition. What is it about? “Sorry, but I don’t
know. There are so many petitions these days. I can’t keep track!”

The next day in Kaunas,
Lithuania’s second largest city, I met the women who had founded Caritas.
Launched the previous summer, by May 1989 there were more than 600 Caritas
groups operating in 44 regions. Members were engaged in charitable work,
religious education, preparation of couples for marriage, and efforts to repair
family life. The movement’s facilities were still quite modest. Caritas’ office
was a one-room ground-floor flat that included a narrow bed, old couch and a
small refrigerator. A table in the center of the room was surrounded by wooden
chairs.

“Caritas began last
summer with the awakening of the nation,” explained founder Albina
Pajarskaite, a silver-haired woman in grey sweater. She had a quiet voice and
shy manner that only amplified her quality of deep conviction. “We realized
that with only political means, the country wouldn’t awaken. A movement of
spiritual life is needed as well. Last August we held a session, prayed
together, attended Mass and signed a covenant concerned with restoration of the
family, education, and the revival of society. We were eight people. We
addressed the covenant to the Cardinal and to Sajudis. The Cardinal
blessed us. Everyone supported it! On the eve of the Sajudis congress in
October, in the second issue of the Sajudis newspaper, Awakening,
we addressed an appeal to all the women of Lithuania. There was a big response.
Caritas groups began to form in every part of the country and we have been
working hard ever since.

“Militant atheism
almost destroyed the family, the village, the parish. Our first concern is to
repair the status of women and to repair the family. The family is the root of
the nation. If you restore womanhood and motherhood, you do much to repair the
family, and if you repair the family, you restore a healthy situation to our society.
But in our present society, women are forced to get paid jobs — the family
can’t survive financially otherwise. Children are sent to centers where there
is no love or faith. We want to create a healthy situation for the family and
restore the dignity of woman.

“Our second area is
education. We understand education in the Catholic way which stresses that
personality can best be developed by respecting human nature, culture and
religious virtues. We are concerned about the education of the child from birth
and even before birth. We need to pay attention to the first three years. Most
mothers, because of jobs, aren’t available to their children in the first three
years, so there is the problem of nurseries and kindergartens. We are concerned
about educational methodology, but also the religious factor.”

What about religious
education in public school? “We hope to get permission to lead voluntary
classes in school to introduce young people to the Church, the Gospel, and
Christian morality. Yesterday a few of us met some officials at the Ministry of
Education in Vilnius. They didn’t have a clear idea of how to respond to us —
what to allow, what to forbid. But at least they are willing to meet and talk.
Eventually it will get somewhere. In the meantime we are starting youth clubs
where discussions can be held and religious literature made available. The
discussion topics will be up to the young people — it can be marxism or
anything they want. We are not afraid of any subject. The first such club opens
next month here in Kaunas. Our goal is that every parish — there are 640
parishes at present — should have such a club. This will make a big difference
for our young people. At present they are crippled due to a one-sided
education. You can only stand firmly when both sides are developed. Our aim is
that each person should have the chance to be happy and strong in his beliefs,
his faith, his ideals. Lithuania is a very small nation — we need a big soul!

“We are starting
programs for young people preparing for married life, to help them to live a
Christian life and raise believing children. In our society, the understanding
of marriage is very superficial. One project already finished is a 380-page
guide book on marriage. This was published by the Catholic Church. The paper is
poor but the content is good. In June we will start our first school for those
who are planning to marry. It will meet on Saturdays and Sundays.

“We are concerned
about old people and the sick that no one notices or cares for. There are many.
They have been abandoned. There are also many younger people with alcoholism or
drug problems. But at this moment there are few people who know how to care for
others.

“We are working to
make the parish into a community once again, not only a place where people come
for the sacraments. We want to revive the Lithuanian language — it used to be
a good language, not the jargon we have now. We want to restore the landscape
of Lithuania which has been so damaged by contempt for beauty and for ecology.
We are promoting a return to a human-scale in architecture — smaller buildings
such as we used to build. It is spiritually destructive to be surrounded by
ugly, huge structures. Often these were built where there were beautiful
buildings. We also want to restore customs, traditions and the symbols of our
faith and of the spiritual life.”

She showed me a book of
photos of the high wooden crosses that once dotted the Lithuanian country side.
“Part of our work is to promote the reconstruction of standing crosses. We
have started to do it. The crosses were a vital expression of our culture and
history. Many used to stand in a place where czarist soldiers executed those
who took part in the uprising in 1863. Some crosses stood near a certain pine
tree where prisoners were hung. Most were destroyed. Some were put in museums.
Lithuania will be a land of crosses once again.”

Can church volunteers get
into public institutions? “We feel no obstacle now except at prisons and
schools. We are trying now to get access to a women’s prison. Some of the
prisoners invited us to come at Christmas. It wasn’t allowed. They said our
request didn’t come early enough. We tried again for Mother’s Day. Again they
said we weren’t in time. We are still trying.”

Is each Caritas member
involved in all these different areas of interest? “No, we ask each person
to concentrate in one direction. Perhaps you have a gift to help sick people —
to help at home or in a hospital. Perhaps you can do educational work. Perhaps
you can help prepare young people for marriage. Perhaps you can help children
whose parents are not able to look after them.”

Is Caritas attempting too
much? “We are working for a miracle. Sometimes we feel like ants. It is
only possible to achieve results with the strength of everyone. We are women
and women are half the nation. It is a good place to start. Take us as we are!
We believe in God and we have hope.”

What gives you inspiration?
“For many years we have seen what was going on. Every Lithuanian women has
had it in her heart. But we felt we couldn’t do anything, or very little. We
did what little we could — a kind of underground work. But it was this which
gave birth to Caritas and Sajudis. These things seem new but they have
deep roots. There were many seeds in the ground. Then perestroika gave
us the possibility we were waiting for and the seeds began to bloom.”

Behind nearby walls
reminiscent of a monastery, we met the Vice Rector of Lithuania’s Catholic
Seminary, Father Algis Baniulis. Ordained in 1974, he had been on the seminary
staff since January 1987 as a teacher of moral theology and ethics. He was a
big man with an athletic build.

I asked what led him toward
a priestly vocation. “I felt it from childhood, even before starting
primary school. There are strong religious traditions in my family, which is a
large one — nine children. One brother is also a priest. But we didn’t feel
pressured toward the priesthood. In fact I didn’t tell my family I was making
this step until I had been accepted into the seminary program.”

Did you experience atheist
indoctrination growing up? “There was atheist teaching in the school and a
lot of pressure not to attend church. Children who openly showed their belief
were persecuted. In the early sixties, the Khrushchev time, it was declared
that soon there would be no churches, no priests and no believers.”

What about political
restriction of the seminary in earlier years? “It used to be that before a
candidate could be accepted his name had to be submitted to the Council for
Religious Affairs in Vilnius, which meant that the KGB would check the names to
see if there was any relative abroad or someone in the family sent to Siberia.
Or perhaps the person had in some way been politically active in an unapproved
manner. Perhaps he had been brave enough to sing a forbidden song. Perhaps his
name had been mentioned in a samizdat publication. Perhaps he had signed
a petition. There were many reasons for removing a candidate’s name. Under such
conditions it wasn’t easy to find anyone who could be approved. Even once you
were accepted there was the chance that the authorities would demand your
expulsion. Two students were dismissed because they tried to arrange for the
publication of a book that a professor had received from abroad. I hardly dared
believe I might be one of the few able to study here. In 1963 the seminary had
only 23 students in the entire seminary’s five-year program. It was our lowest
ebb. In that year only five were permitted to enroll. In 1969 I was one of
eight accepted — altogether there were only 30 students.”

And now? “Now the
situation has changed. Last year the enrollment limit was 40 but the Cardinal
nominated 46 and all were accepted. This year it was publicly declared that we
could accept anyone we wanted and that there was no longer a limit on numbers.
The only limit we face now is space and facilities. Now there are 163 students.
We are ready now to go from a five to a six-year program.”

Do you have the study
material you need? “Not enough but the situation is much better. We
receive material from Rome, Poland, Canada and the United States.”

Are there enough priests to
meet the need? “Far from it. We have about 650 priests, but many are very
old and can hardly move. There are presently 160 parishes without priests. Our
hope is that in the new conditions the number of priests will increase little
by little and there eventually will be no parish without at least one priest.
Right now we don’t have the time we want to be with people. When I was a parish
priest, it was normal to work seventeen or eighteen hours a day. There was no
time for meals. I was afraid of anyone asking for my time.”

What about the formation of
monasteries? “There are unofficial monasteries but still those in them are
careful. Who knows the future of perestroika? Our monks hesitate to draw
attention to themselves. Perhaps it will happen in the near future. There were
talks last year about re-opening monasteries that were closed. The discussion
showed that many people have very little understanding of monasticism. Some
wondered how a monastery would fit under the existing law. Perhaps it could be
considered some kind of cooperative that grows vegetables. But we are not
founding economic cooperatives. So we are waiting for Perestroika Two.”

Is the basic attitude of
communists toward religion changed or is this just a tactical withdrawal?
“I think it is a change of heart. Attitudes have changed. In the recent
pre-election period we even had Party officials asking priests to help them get
the votes of believers.”

How is it that religious
faith remains so deep and that so many believers seem so
forgiving? “Our faith owes a great deal to so much atheist
propaganda. It was so vulgar and went on for so many years. What the
authorities did stirred up a lot of hatred. Many priests were sent to prison or
labor camps — for teaching children or just because they were priests. But the
Lithuanian people are faithful by nature. As Christians we cannot accept
revenge or hatred. But it is not easy to forgive.”

Has atheist education
changed? “Completely. It is nothing like it was. The Atheist Museum in
Vilnius has been closed. We now see religious programs on television while
atheist programs have disappeared. Mass is shown live on television on major
feast days. Religious articles are being published. Bishops and priests are
regularly in the press.”

What will happen to those
who made their living promoting atheism? (laughter) “Their activity was
state financed. I suppose the state can find something more useful for them to
do. It was not such happy work. Most of them weren’t very skilled in what they
did — they didn’t know much about religion. Their methods were primitive.
Mainly they were blackmailing the young. Now the blackmail is over and we find
a lot of students coming here from nearby institutes. They want contact with
our students — to talk, to play football or basketball, to sing together. A
number of folk music groups have asked to come here — they want to show us
what they can do but also they want to learn from us.”

What are your hopes were
for Lithuania’s future? “It has
been our tradition to be on friendly relations with all our neighbors. We are
hard-working people, very democratic. We want to be as independent as is
possible.”

PROTESTANTS

One of the mandates of the
czars had been to safeguard the Orthodoxy of Holy Russia. Non-Orthodox
religions were kept — at times driven — outside the borders. But from the
time of Peter the Great onward religious isolation gradually ended, partly due
to territory gained in war, partly due to modernization and commerce.

In the late 1700s Catherine
the Great invited German-speaking pacifist Mennonites to form an agricultural
colony on the Dnieper. They introduced not only more productive methods of
agriculture but a Bible-centered way of life that impressed their neighbors. In
the same period, with the acquisition of Latvia, a large Lutheran population
came within the Russian Empire.

In 1812 Czar Alexander I
discovered the Bible, read it with passion, and opened the way for the British
and Foreign Bible Society to set up a Russian Bible Society. Bible reading was
taken up in countless homes throughout the empire.

During the Nineteenth
Century dissatisfaction with the Orthodox Church increased. Under Peter the
Great, Orthodoxy had been stripped of its independence and become a closely
regulated department of government, a condition that remained until the
abdication of Czar Nicholas II in 1917. The local clergy was badly educated and
over-burdened while the higher clergy were often remote from the people. Fewer
young men were choosing a priestly vocation: in 1840 there had been 117,000
Orthodox clergy while in 1890 the number had shrunk to 97,000. There was a
thirst for something more vital and intimate. The climate was ripe for the
activities of Protestant missionaries, yet the attempt to convert those who
were nominally Orthodox was a criminal offense. Protestant preachers risked
severe penalties.

Despite all the dangers,
the missionaries sought converts and found them. On August 20, 1867, Martin
Kalweit immersed Nikita Isaevich Voronin in a stream near Tbilisi, marking the
start of the evangelical missionary movement. More baptisms followed, many
occurring at labor camps. “It was a time of horrible persecutions,”
one Baptist leader recalled. “Exiles, arrests, fines and beatings of
believers rained down upon the audacious followers of the Gospel . . . [yet]
the brothers nevertheless did not cease their meetings, holding them in basements,
in the woods, in the cemetery, in ravines . . . “[36]

Protestant fervor and
courage brought results. By 1905 there were nearly 23,000 Baptists and more
than 20,000 Evangelical Christians. “Every Baptist a missionary!” was
the motto, and many took up the call despite the penalties that might be
imposed.

Following the October
Revolutions of 1917, a “golden age” began for Soviet Protestants.
With the abolition of a special status for the Russian Orthodox Church,
Protestants were free to publish and evangelize freely. At their height in
1929, their number was about 500,000, but that fall 100 Baptist preachers were
arrested and all regional Baptist offices closed following the arrest of their
officers. By the mid-thirties, staggered by the blows of Stalin, the number of
evangelicals had been halved and the church driven underground.

Only after the Second World
War, in a period of limited toleration, did slow growth resume. Even then, a
significant section of Protestant believers refused to be registered by the
local Councils for Religious Affairs. Many paid the price of years and even
death in the gulag.

Within the Russian Empire,
Protestantism acquired a special character that has not been lost in the Soviet
period. As Sir John Lawrence has observed, “The danger of every strict
religion is that it will end in hypocrisy, but that danger is not so great
among the Russians as in the West. Many Russians tell lies, but they do not
generally deceive themselves; and when a Russian is honest, his integrity goes
deeper than the conventional morality which may pass for honesty in other
countries. Many Russian Baptists [the main Protestant group in the USSR]
combine this deep integrity with some of the delightful qualities of the
Orthodox spirituality that surrounds them.”[37]

Kiev

On Monday nights the
Seventh Day Adventist House of Prayer in Kiev is shared with one of the city’s
five Baptist congregations. The building was rapidly filling up with Baptists
when I arrived in January 1989. The light green hall was brightly lit by neon lamps.
“God is love,” read one text high on the right wall. The Ten
Commandments filled much of the front wall of the hall.

There was about the same
ratio of women to men — two-thirds — as one would usually find in an Orthodox
church in Kiev. The older women were wearing scarfs and shawls, the scarfless
younger women were colorfully and smartly dressed. Children were plentiful,
especially in the balcony. One of them put a handkerchief on her head, grinning
broadly at her neighbor until an adult hand pulled the handkerchief away and
waved a scolding finger at the child. A choir of forty people, most in their
twenties, sat in front. Christmas hymns, among them “Silent Night,”
alternated with texts from the Bible, the reading of poems, prayer and
preaching. I was surprised at how much Mary was emphasized. Orthodox piety has
left its stamp on Soviet Baptists. Protestants in the west would have been
alarmed.

Late in the two-hour
service a young woman stood before the pulpit and, in a broken voice, confessed
that she had made some serious mistakes in an effort to try to convince a
friend to live differently. “I got involved with the wrong kind of
people,” she said, tears running down her face. “Trying to get her
out of that crowd I just got myself into it.” During the prayer for her
that followed, the whole congregation got down on its knees. “Sin is the
cause of all mischief and errors,” Pastor Dukhonchenko responded,
“but Jesus Christ has been born to show the way to become free of
sin.” He embraced her.

After the service, many
members of the congregation crowded into a small adjacent room to meet me. This
quickly turned into an amiable dialogue in which there was not a moment of
silence. One man showed me the manuscript of a book of poems. “It is sometimes
said in propaganda that believers are ignorant people,” he said, “but
many are cultured people — poets and musicians. The poems you heard in the
service tonight were read by their authors. We are planning to publish a
collection of Christian poems.” “Most of our songs,” said a
member of the choir, “are typical Ukrainian folk songs. Did you like them?
Now we are singing them in public squares.”

I asked what perestroika
has meant for them. “The first change,” said an older man,
“is that previously our state called itself atheist. Now it is described
as a state of believers and non-believers. That’s a big change!” A younger
man spoke up. “Glasnost has meant access to information. It has
been amazing for many people to discover that seventy percent of the population
are believers — Christians, Jews, Moslems and Buddhists. Kharchev said this in
public when he talked about the rights of believing people. This surprises a
lot of people and it makes us rejoice.”

“It is easier to get
Bibles,” said the pastor. “There was an edition of 110,000 copies in
our own language. And there are more Ukrainian Bibles coming to us soon from
our brothers in Canada. We can see the time coming when whoever wants a Bible
can have it. More people than ever want a copy. They are willing to pay money
just to read the Gospel.”

“And we are going to
have a Ukrainian hymnal,” said the choir director. He showed me the
hand-copied text he was using. “People are more open,” said a young
woman. “You ask them if they want to come to church and they say
yes.” “The press has stopped printing articles distorting facts about
believers,” said a teacher.

But are there still
problems? “Believers are praying for Gorbachev,” said a man in a blue
windbreaker, “but there is still a lot of red tape. Bureaucracy is still
thriving. Also we have not yet been able to get permission to have our own
place of worship. They allow it in Moscow but we still have our local problems.
The local authorities are at odds with perestroika.”

What is special about
Ukrainian Baptists? “First,” said a smiling old man with raised
eyebrows, “we are very open, friendly and musical people. We have our own
language and our own songs. But on the other hand believers are alike no matter
where they are.”

The next evening the same
church was used for worship by Kiev’s Seventh Day Adventists. I sat next to
Galina Gritsuk and her eight-year-old son Yuri. Galina had come despite her
youngest son’s grave illness. Galina whispered a translation of the service.

The service centered on a
sermon by Pastor Alexander Pankov about the conversion of Mary Magdala.
“Can a human being really be changed in a moment? Can sin be removed
instantly? Look what happened to Mary. When Jesus was in Magdala, she was
changed. But when Jesus left Mary returned to her old ways. We are told that
Jesus pulled her out of the devil’s jaws seven times before the sin finally was
removed from her heart. She abandoned her former way of life.”

The sermon was followed by
a collection, a time of prayer, a hymn, a blessing and announcements. After the
hour-long service I met with leaders of the congregation in an office across a
courtyard.

“Officially there are
180 registered Adventist churches with 14,000 baptized Adventists in the
Ukraine — and about 32,000 and 418 churches throughout the USSR,” said
Pastor Pankov. “In fact there are more. Not every congregation is willing
to register itself. Now that we are in the phase of perestroika, perhaps
the day is coming when we will know the real numbers. Nineteen churches were opened
in 1988. We have 178 ordained ministers plus many Bible workers being prepared
for ordination.”

How did this congregation
of Adventists come to share their church with the Baptists? “Originally
our church was a private home. We bought it in 1954 and rebuilt it. The idea
that the building should be used by the Baptists as well came from the state
authorities. It looked better this way on their report to Moscow, uniting
different denominations under one roof. Neither the Adventists nor the Baptists
agreed but we had no choice. Both are now asking permission for the Baptists to
have their own building. They plan to build a new structure and we want to
reconstruct this one. It used to be that the authorities said to us, ‘You are
married until the second coming.’ But now we hope for a positive
response.”

What divides Adventists and
Baptists? “Like Baptists, we believe that salvation is in Christ only. We
seek to present Christ in our life, to reflect his life, his character, his
obedience. We differ with Baptists in keeping Saturday rather than Sunday as a
day of rest. The seventh day, the Sabbath, is Saturday. In following Jesus, we
are keeping his commandments, trying to obey them and live them in our heart.
We stress leading a healthy life — no drinking, no smoking, no drugs. We
abstain from all food prohibited in the Bible. We also differ in our way of
preaching. The Baptists preaching style stirs up the emotions. The Adventist
style is more deliberate. We avoid manipulating emotions. We try calmly to convert
the mind and heart. Feelings are temporary. Faith is constant.”

What effect did the
Revolution have on Adventists? “In Lenin’s time, it was wonderful. For the
first time we faced no obstacles. We could preach and publish freely, hold
open-air meetings and speak where we pleased. We met in the House of Columns in
Moscow. Though it was a hard time for the country — civil war, foreign
invasion and hunger — it was a time of rapid growth for our church. Before the
Revolution the Russian Orthodox Church dominated the country. It was difficult
for all other denominations to survive. We had a lot of reasons to feel
offended by the Orthodox. But then under Stalin all Christians suffered
together, Orthodox and Protestant. We became friends in our suffering. Now the
situation is healthy among the churches. No church is oppressing another
church. This is a good for us but it is also good for the Orthodox. It is
salvation to them no longer to be an oppressor.”

How is the present
relationship with the local Council for Religious Affairs? “We have
cooperation from the Council even though we don’t always get what we ask for.
But the Gospel teaches us to be humble and meek and to be content with what we
have. Patience is always rewarded.”

Still, isn’t facing
bureaucrats a hard test of faith? “We
have faced a lot of them and still face them. Not all of them like perestroika,
as you know, but others understand. From our side, we go higher if we have to.
On some questions we have gone to Kharchev himself in Moscow. He is a man we
respect. We praise the Lord that he is making a real effort to help religion in
the Soviet Union. The Council for Religious Affairs no longer works only for
the atheists but for the believers as well.”

What happens if the local
Council doesn’t accept what they say in Moscow? “Then we have to be
patient. We pray that what we asked for will be given, and we wait for the new
law on religion.”

Are believers helping to
write the law? “The special commission working on the law consults with
believers. The president of our Adventist association has been among those who
gave advice.”

What do you hope for from
the new law? “Our great hope is that the Gospel can be preached throughout
the USSR. We are made hopeful by what Kharchev says. All we ask for is what we
had after the Revolution. Whenever they speak of Lenin’s Law of Freedom of
Conscience, we know what this means and we look forward to it.”

But if your hopes aren’t
met? “A lot of people are skeptical about perestroika. If someone
doubts perestroika can do what it should, we say God can restructure
what needs to be restructured. We know that there are still a lot of enemies of
religion. There are those who think of perestroika only in terms of
material welfare, who don’t consider the spiritual hunger of the people.
Perhaps we still face hard times. But the Gospel reminds us of the woman
suffering in labor before the joy of birth. We have been through Stalin and
Khrushchev. We know about suffering. But we are ready to be tortured to give
birth to new life.”

Did members of your family
suffer? “My great-grandfather went through all the persecutions before the
Revolution. My grandmother tasted that golden age that followed the Revolution
and then she suffered the repression. In the thirties believers met secretly at
night. One grandfather died in the prison camps sometime between 1938 and 1940,
the other grandfather was shot by the Nazis in 1942. My father was a pastor in
the Khrushchev time. I have been through the Brezhnev ‘stagnation period’ — a
very complicated time, doing Gospel work on the one hand and trying to have
good relations with the state authorities on the other. You needed wisdom to do
it. It was hard.”

What about the prison
camps? “Many of our pastors remained in the camps forever. Our church was
beheaded. The best were martyred — they never returned. They suffered equally
with all the Soviet people. No different.”

Do you see positive
developments today? “Many! We are publishing Bibles and other publications
again. We were given permission to build a seminary near Moscow. We have built
it at our own expense and by our own labor. People got permission to leave jobs
and farms to take part — and where they had trouble with their employer, the
Council of Religious Affairs helped. We didn’t expect that. We already have
first-year students. After so many years of difficulties, it has to be said
that we still are somewhat apprehensive in our relations with the authorities,
and they with us, but in the course of time we will leave our prejudices
behind. We are living in a time when God is doing miracles even though we
didn’t expect them.”

Irkutsk

When I arrived at the
Baptist Church in Irkutsk later in the month I found a log building half-buried
in snow. We sat in an austere dining room decorated with texts from the Bible:
“Blessed are the pure in heart” and “I have set watchmen upon
your walls, O Jerusalem, who must never be silent. Those who are mindful of the
Lord must take no rest.”

“We have just
celebrated the 75th anniversary of our church’s founding,” Victor
Georgievich Sitnikov said, adding that it had been closed from 1937 until 1945.
The church had 400 members.

Are Baptists widespread in
Siberia? “In practically every city.”

Has perestroika had
much impact for Baptists? “There have been remarkable changes,” said
Deacon Genadi Ivanovich Abramov, a much younger man who divides his time
between the church and work as a plumber. “We are no longer treated like
third class people. Kharchev, the head of the Council for Religious Affairs in
Moscow, has said in the press that there must be equality between believers and
unbelievers, that both believers and atheist should have the same opportunity
to preach their beliefs.”

And here in Irkutsk?
“With the Millennium celebration last year we were able to hold a concert
in the House of Dramatic Arts. The choir sang. We read religious poems. It was
two hours long. All the 800 seats were filled and people were standing. The
theater was filled to the limit. A year ago, something like this was
unthinkable — a religious event in a public hall! Formerly we were allowed to
preach the gospel only in church, nowhere else. Our choir also went to Chita [a
city several hundred miles to the east beyond Lake Baikal] to take part in a
similar concert. Two months ago we had a public meeting on the topic of
morality for young people in the hall of the city library. This was announced
beforehand in the press. There were 300 seats available. About 500 people came.
The atmosphere was very friendly.”

What was the discussion
like? “We were talking about the moral state of young people now and what
we should do, how to get out of the condition we are in, how to take the path
to purity. We Baptists presented the Bible and what it teaches. We read some
passages and sang a few psalms.”

Are these events having
impact on church attendance? “Fresh people are coming. In fact our church
is too small. We have just been given permission to build a larger one
nearby.”

What about the demand for
religious literature? “We are also getting many requests for copies of the
Gospels and the Bible. We are getting copies from abroad so we are able to meet
this need, at least for now.”

I asked the deacon how he
became involved in the church. “My father and mother are believers so I
grew up in church, participating in services and feasts. In 1976, when I was
21, I confessed that I was redeemed and was baptized and was received as a
believer.”

I asked Victor Sitnikov how
he came to be a Baptist. “I was born in Irkutsk. Now I am retired but for
25 years I was the operator of an excavation machine. My relatives were
believers and my father and mother had been in the church, but they loved civic
life too much and gave it up. Now recently they have returned. I became a believer
when I was 26. The Lord had to fight hard for my soul. In December 1957 it
became a bitter fight whether or not to come to church. My soul was a real
battlefield. It was so severe that I couldn’t say even a two or three-letter
word. I couldn’t say yes or no. I asked myself, ‘Am I not lord over my own
word? If I say yes I will go and if I say no I won’t go.’ I was in the tram and
finally I said yes to the Lord. Right away I felt like iron bars had been
lifted from my shoulders. It seemed as if the sun was shining much brighter. I
started visiting churches and then became a member of this one. Now I am
chairman of the church council.”

Are Baptists involved in
local charity work? “It used to be impossible but now this has changed.
There are five orphanages near us. We decided to get involved with one where
the children are deaf and dumb. We met with the chief doctor who told us what
their needs were. We collected 8,000 rubles and bought furniture — tables,
wardrobes, tables, dishes, cooking utensils, games. We also want to offer
voluntary service but they aren’t yet prepared. We hope to be able to take care
of a few wards. We are asking the Regional Party Committee to give its
approval. We could start with just one ward. Perhaps this year we can start. This
is our hope.”

As I left I made a gift to
the church, a box of matzo bread just given to me by local Orthodox
Jews. “It’s ecumenical bread,” I said, “the kind that Jesus
ate.”

Archangel

Archangel’s Baptist House
of Prayer is in the timber-processing area of the city. Transformed internally
into a church, it was an ordinary house surrounded by similar wooden houses.
Sidewalks in the neighborhood are made of boards. It was spring but there were
still patches of snow on the ground. On the yellow walls inside were several
texts from the New Testament. “Christ is Risen!” said the sign in
front, identical to signs hung in Orthodox churches during the Easter days.

The pastor, Nikolai
Devyatkin, was preaching when I arrived. “The life of Christ is an example
for everyone. Today we must prepare ourselves for eternal glory. We must
practice tolerance, console each other, and love each other. Christ is risen!
You may go to Jerusalem and see the empty tomb. He is not there. He is among
the people. Not everyone knows of the existence of Christ. Not everyone knows
who he really is. Not everyone knows about his resurrection. But more and more
are coming to know. And we who know, we must redeem our sins in this life so
that we will be given joy in the future life.”

The congregation sang the
traditional Orthodox Easter hymn: “Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tomb bestowing life.”

I was invited to an Easter
meal at pastor’s home. “This section of Archangel was built up in the
fifties,” Nikolai Devyatkin told me. “The church is fifteen years old
although the community of Baptists in Archangel goes back all the way to 1918
when Baptists from Leningrad came here. They preached in different parts of the
city and some people responded. A small group took root which gradually grew to
a congregation of a hundred. We weren’t the only Protestants. In another
district there was an Anglican church. So it was until 1920. Then came the time
of purges. We lost the right to exist. Believers had to congregate underground.
Many were exiled. But in 1947 our group started expanding. We were able to
start holding regular meetings. In 1974 we officially registered and found our
Prayer House, only a very shabby place at that time.”

Why didn’t the church
register sooner? “The main problem before 1974 was that the authorities
were unwilling. There were also different opinions within the church. The act
of registration caused a split in our congregation. Some didn’t agree and they
left. They are still in Archangel. Because the reasons for the split are now
gone we hope there can be a reconciliation.”

What publishing work is
being done by Baptists? “We don’t attempt that in Archangel. Our national
publication, Bratsky Vestnik (Fellowship Herald), which came out every
two months, will now be monthly. Also our office in Moscow will publish a
weekly newspaper, Evangelskaya Vest (Evangelical News).”

What about education of
clergy? “In the late twenties we lost our Bible School. For many years our
only educational program was by correspondence, although a few candidates were
sent to Baptist schools in Germany. Just recently, in February, permission was
given to open a seminary to train ministers and preachers — probably it will
be in Moscow. We will have a four-year program. There is a hope that we will
also be allowed to open a seminary in the Ukraine.”

How many Baptists are there
in the Soviet Union? “About 250,000. The number of growing steadily. Our
All Union Council [of Evangelical Christian Baptists] in Moscow reports that
baptisms are up by 25 percent. I don’t know about the figures for the Ukraine,
but in the Russian federation there are nearly 600 registered churches and
almost that many non-registered. Probably there are twice that number in the
Ukraine.”

Over a meatless lunch with
some of Archangel’s Seventh Day Adventists the next day, I heard about the
Adventists’ history. “The Church of Adventists of the Seventh Day was
founded in the United States in 1863,” said the pastor, Vyacheslav
Petroberg. “We have no creed but the Bible. Membership is open to adults
and young people who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior and
who have been baptized by immersion. We observe the seventh day, Saturday, the
Sabbath, and are awaiting the second coming of Christ.

“In 1886 the Adventist
message was brought to the Crimea by Germans and then went up the Volga. In the
czarist times it was difficult because only the Orthodox Church was permitted.
The Adventist church came to Archangel only ten years ago. In the beginning the
local attitude to our church wasn’t easy. We didn’t understand them and they
didn’t understand us. But now, by God’s grace, we are witnessing wonderful
changes. We opened a center for training pastors last year in Zaokski, in the
Tula district. This combines part-time residential periods with correspondence
courses. We will be opening a printing shop to publish both religious
literature and material to make society more healthy. Land for it has been
given in the Tula territory.”

What is distinctive about
Adventists? “We stress a healthy way of life, both moral and physical. We
spread information about the harm done by tobacco and alcohol. We advocate
healthy food grown in the right way. We now have permission to start a
Soviet-American joint venture for food production, a factory to process
vegetarian food for children. The food will be distributed throughout the
system of child care. American Adventists are experts in vegetable production
and we are learning their methods. In the territory where the theological
school has been started the local authorities have given us land for
agricultural use. The first green houses have now been built there. We will
supply vegetables and greens for the settlement as well as local orphanages and
hospitals. It’s a small beginning but significant. We have the potential to do
a lot more.”

What do you hope for?
“We expect that the opportunities churches had in the time of Lenin will
be restored. In Lenin’s time all religious communities had the chance to work
for the benefit of the whole society. Before the Stalin purges began we had an
eye-healing clinic. We believe in the new conditions our church can contribute
positively to the improvement of health care and medicine in this country. We
could help reduce smoking. Adventists in America have developed a remarkable
system for giving up smoking. We have published an article about it in our
magazine. We plan to launch campaigns to combat drunkenness and drug
addiction.”

I mentioned the
consequences of Prohibition in the US. “Prohibition is not the remedy. The
evils causing addiction can’t be solved that way. We haven’t had prohibition
here but the semi-prohibition we experienced [the campaign Gorbachev launched
shortly after assuming leadership of the Communist Party] caused many other
problems. What we can do is show people how to stop. Also we have experience in
operating detoxification clinics in East and West Germany, institutions served
entirely by Adventists. These have been quite successful. We also have done a
lot of educational work. Many people have no idea what the physical
consequences are of using alcohol and other drugs. But it is not just a
question of therapeutic methods. You have to care for both the body and the soul.
First Christ healed the soul, then the body.”

Are local Adventists able
to engage in charitable service? “We are participating in actions of mercy
in hospitals and asylums for the mentally ill. It is noble work, but difficult.
In your country actions of mercy by believers were never suspended, but we
faced quite a different situation. There was a mistake on the way and this is
why perestroika is needed. Now we have started a regional Union of
Charitable Societies. This embraces the Red Cross, the board of the health care
agency and believers. It is a remarkable achievement. On May 27 there will be a
charity concert to raise money for the children’s fund. Through charity work
people are learning more about the church. Many knew nothing about it. There is
a huge interest in religion in general and the variety of churches.

“In the time of
suffering we lost our specialists. We didn’t have the chance to send our young
people for higher education. Now the situation is different. We will have the
chance now, for example, to prepare people who will specialize in treatment of
the heart diseases of children.”

Is the present change
irreversible? “We think so. We have the magnificent revelations from Saint
John the Divine who prophesied that at the end there will only be two forces,
or three or four, which resist global evil. One of them will be this country,
the USSR. Gorbachev confirms this prophecy. We will have the kind of freedom in
this country which has never before existed in he entire world. Therefore we are
thankful to our church and the national leadership. We are confident that our
Lord God is running these developments. The emergence of the United States was
an act of God that was prophesied by Saint John. The Soviet Union was also
pre-determined and we believe will be used by God. So we believe in the
irreversibility of the perestroika process.”

Petrozavodsk

The Lutheran Church in
Petrozavodsk is in a village-like suburb of traditional wooden houses. The
church was full and the congregation singing a hymn as we arrived. A wooden
altar was in front of the church under a big wooden cross. Many people had
Bibles but all the hymns books appeared to be hand-written copies.

I was present for a service
on Wednesday morning. When the hymn was finished an elderly woman came forward
and offered a prayer of thanksgiving: “We thank you, Lord, for helping us
survive the winter and we thank you for the warm spring. We thank you for
meeting our daily needs. We thank you for our bread. We thank you for this
beautiful church to pray in. Most of all we thank you for your son Jesus
Christ. We thank you for everything.”

A hymn followed, then a
reading from the Bible. Maria Kayava came to the front to speak. She began with
prayer: “You are our God and you have always been our God and you have
always shown us your love. You have spoken to us through your Son. I am always
grateful for your words and for telling us what to do. We all have to follow
your words no matter what. Without you we wouldn’t have strength. You said, ‘Go
and teach all nations.’ We are trying to do it. If we commit any sin, we turn
to you for forgiveness.”

She paused and then spoke
to the congregation: “It used to be we had no right to practice our
religion. Now we are living a new life. We prayed for this and it is happening.
Isn’t it wonderful? Isn’t it a miracle? We thank God for perestroika and
freedom of conscience. We feel we are free. How happy we are. Jesus is making
all things new. He is making a road for us in the desert. We should go down
that road without looking back on old evils. We don’t have to remember what
happened before. We must look ahead to see what God has in store for us. God is
the God of love. We cannot comprehend such love. We cannot understand it with
our brains, only in our spirit.

“Jesus was sent to
earth to teach us how to love each other — not to fight each other. He taught
us to love our neighbor no matter what his faults. If I have hatred and sorrow
in my heart I must ask God to take it away. We must forgive. If someone pretends
to be higher than God, God will punish him. That is not for us to do. We are
taught to forgive. I have sinned but God has forgiven me. We must also forgive
those who sinned against us. We have to love our neighbors no matter what.
Restoration is happening now. Everything is developing beautifully. We can buy
Bibles. More churches are opening. Let us pray that it will continue forever.
In any event we know that God has only good things in store for us. We won’t
allow anyone to shake our belief in God. Let us help those who are stumbling
get to their feet. Pray for those who are misguided. Let us serve Jesus from
the bottom of our hearts. We only have to go the way he tells us. God is
supporting us. Who can stand against us?”

She ended the sermon with
another prayer: “We thank you for calling us your children. Help us spread
the your word so we can help anyone who is not at peace. We bless the
government of this town for giving us the chance to pray freely. We appreciate
our freedom. Help our youngsters to be free from the abominable manifestations
of these times. If someone has been led astray, help him find his way back. Let
us help anyone in dire need, as Jesus helped us. Bless us, God, and forgive
us.”

Her sermon kindled a request
to speak from the local representative of the Council for Religious Affairs,
Boris Feodorovich Detshuev. He spoke from in front of the altar: “Dear
friends, it is an important time. Perestroika is going on in our
country, and not only here but in other countries. You Lutherans too are
upholding this process, helping us do away with the mistakes of the past.
Crimes were committed against believers. We are guilty of this. We speak of it
openly because we don’t want the mistakes to be repeated. Our society is
supposed to protect both believers and atheists. This is in our constitution.
We are going to put the principle into practice.”

After the service, Maria
Kayava showed me the a scrap book of photos of the church’s construction. Many
of the builders were women. “Having a church had been our request to the
local authorities when we arrived here but it took many years before we got
permission. We could pray only in our homes. At last permission was given.
Construction began just after Easter 1983. Our church warming occurred eight
months later, on December 18. The Orthodox Church helped us. Also we have had
help from Lutherans in Finland — they sent us our Bibles. Now we are building
a reception room and a priest’s house. We were given building permission and
have received the material and the work is started. We will have our own priest
this coming winter.”

The congregation was
founded by people of Finnish ancestry who once lived in villages near
Leningrad. “We were peasants, not rich but living comfortably. We supplied
most of the dairy goods to Leningrad. We were honest workers and had a good
life — no one was drunk, no militia was needed to keep order, we never had to
lock our doors. I am old enough to remember before the revolution. I once saw Czar
Nicholas II taking part in a parade. I was sitting on my mother’s shoulders and
the czar was standing in the back of a car with his arms outstretched. I never
saw Lenin but we were for him. The Finns put great store in the revolution. We
thought it would make life better and help us develop our culture. Some good
things happened while Lenin was alive. In the beginning it was wonderful.
1918-1919 were crisis years but by 1925 there was a surplus of products. With
Lenin’s New Economic Policy, you could find what you needed and everything was
cheap. If it wasn’t in the stores, you could order it from abroad. But Lenin
died and Stalin took over and it all came to an end. On the 7th of April 1931
at 2 a.m. they came and took us all away. We were dangerous people, they said.
We were put in cattle cars and taken east. I worked in the gold mines for many
years — I was a specialist in gold washing! I have held seven-gram pieces of
gold in my hands. It was very hard for us. We were warned not to speak Finnish.
We didn’t dare to speak at all in the mines. Now they teach Finnish in the
schools and use it on television. In those former times you would never have
found your way to us. Never. In fact we wouldn’t be here either.”

I asked Maria what became
of her husband. There was a pained look in her face and a prolonged silence.
“My husband was sent to another place. I never found out when he died,
only that he had been sentenced to ten years and had no right to correspond.
When the ten years were over I wrote to him and then got a notice that he had
died. My hope now is that we can find out where he is buried. Millions of
others died like him. I am not alone in my sorrow. My lot was no harder than
anyone else’s.”

I asked how she had come
back to the western part of the country. “In the Khrushchev time we were
allowed to move back to the west. Many of us came to Karelia. Here there was a
welcome and we could live a new life. Let the dead bury the dead. God helps
us.”

Her face was free of any
trace of bitterness — beautiful eyes, a gentle expression.

I asked her how such evil
could have been possible. Her answer was brief: “Fear, fear, fear.”

I asked her, “How did
you maintain your hope? How do you forgive those who took your husband’s life
and caused you such suffering?”

“It is the gift of the
Holy Spirit. The spiritual values that the Church gives cannot be compared with
any other. I don’t even want to lay the blame at Stalin’s door. We are not
alone in our sorrow. We are a piece of the nation, a piece of the world. We
hope that our grandchildren will see another life and that such things will
never be repeated.” She talked about her chidden and grandchildren —
where they were, what they were doing.

“Many people still
cannot forgive,” she added, “like my son-in-law Yasha. He saw his
mother shot when the Germans came and took a vow to revenge her. He saw many
terrible things. I tell him to forget vengeance — the German nation suffered
just as much as we did.”

I asked if her children had
the chance to move across the border to Finland, would that be better for them?
“No! The spiritual level here is much higher. In Finland they have
accumulation fever. Our young people here are very independent and good
workers. We have a lower rate of divorce than in Finland.”

Baku

On a Sunday in May we drove
into a residential district of Baku, capital city of the mainly Moslem republic
of Azerbaijan in the Soviet Union’s deep south, to participate in the Baptist
morning worship service. The church was once a private house but had been
enlarged. There was a vase full of flowers on the upright piano in front of
pulpit and a grand piano further back. In the center was a long table with six
chalices. Women sat on one side of the church, men on the other. Only the older
women were wearing scarves. Everyone appeared to be of European origin.

The pastor, Nikolai
Pavlovich Grubich, preached about love with many hand gestures. There were two
mikes on the pulpit but no amplification was needed. After the sermon, during a
period of spontaneous prayer, many of the older women cried. A communion
service followed. Only those who stood up received the blessed bread and wine.
The piano played softly while the bread and chalice was passed. The men serving
communion were the last to receive.

Meeting with Pastor Grubich
in a side room after the service,

I asked about the communion
service. “We usually have communion on the first Sunday of May,” he
said, “but because Easter was on April 30, we decided to move it back two
weeks. For us communion is a memorial service. Jesus Christ said to do this in
his memory. When he said this bread was his body, he was comparing the bread
with his preparation for suffering. This is why the bread should be treated
firmly when it is broken into pieces. Christ’s body had to pass through
breaking and suffering. We look on the bread as food but it reminds us of the
suffering of Christ. The same for the wine. It is made from pressing grapes.
The grape has to be wounded, but its juice can wash away our sins.”

How do Baptists prepare for
it? “If we judge ourselves, no one can pass judgment. We see our need for
purification and forgiveness, and this depends on Jesus Christ. Each person has
to prepare, to forgive others and to seek Christ’s forgiveness.”

How did you become a
believer? “I was baptized in Poltava [in the eastern Ukraine]. After my
army service I came to Azerbaijan and joined the local church and started
teaching the word of God and visiting the sick. I was a deacon. In 1975 I was
elected Presbyter.”

Have perestroika and
glasnost had any impact on religious life? “They have had
remarkable impact on the life of believers but the situation is still
tentative. The old law is being reconsidered and a new one being prepared. When
the new law is published, then we can judge the real depth of perestroika.”

What do you hope to find in
the new law? “We look for the right to preach the Gospel to everyone who
wants to hear it. We want to have this possibility anywhere. Now we are working
within the framework of the old law. We can respond to anyone who comes to us
with questions, but there are many people who still do not dare to come to
church. We need to come to them. We want the same rights people have in
England. At Hyde Park, a public place, anyone can speak. One person can speak
for God, another against. We want the chance to speak for God.”

What about your relations
with the Council for Religious Affairs? “We have friendly relations. We
always understood that it is appointed to carry out its assigned duties and
that these are not of their own making. But the process of perestroika is
going on and both sides understand what it means. We are on the way.”

Is there atheist education
going on in Azerbaijan? “It has been going on for a long time and is still
going on.”

How would you compare
Azerbaijan with the Ukraine? “I lived 21 years in the Ukraine. Believers
there were regarded as closed-minded. It is better here. I think Azerbaijan is
a more religious area than many other regions, because of the Moslems. There
isn’t the same hostility toward believers. The anti-religious education is not
so militant. There is more respect for believers. People show more interest in
faith.”

Do you sense that Moslems
here have an advantage over Christians? “No. The law is balanced. All
believers have an equal opportunity.”

And yet you said that there
are still people afraid to come to church. “Yes, I think so. It is still
hard to become a believer. If you are in a family of five or six, other people
in your family may object. They think you will compromise the family. But a new
law that equalizes both believers and non-believers, so that neither has more
rights, will change the situation. Then belief will be no disgrace to the
family.”

Sergei commented that there
will still be problems in the work place with functionaries who don’t accept
reform for believers and who can do harm to those who identify themselves as
believers. “Yes, there will still be problems but the social climate will
be better. The main question the functionary should think about is what kind of
person you are. Are you a good worker? An honest person? Your religious belief
should not be held against you. But for the believer what other people think of
you shouldn’t matter. If they oppose you, it may even encourage your faith.
Jesus said that just as he was persecuted, his followers will be persecuted. We
have seen it happen over and over again in history.”

Will it present a problem
to Christianity in the Soviet Union not to be persecuted? “We have
to leave this in the hands of God. He knows best. You shouldn’t try to take
charge of events. Whatever happens, we will face the problems that come. The
changes now going on in some way benefit us but they bring other
problems.”

For example? “Freedom
is not a good thing in itself but only good if we point ourselves toward God.
If we point ourselves away from God, it isn’t a desirable freedom. If this
freedom will give us more faith, we are asking God to give it to us. But if it
will drive people further from God, then we do not need it.”

JEWS

In 1738, Baruch Leibov, a
Jew who had tried to establish a synagogue in a village near Smolensk, was
burned to death after being convicted of attempting to convert a retired naval
officer.[38] In those years, Jews were still rare in Russia. It wasn’t until
1772, with Russian annexation of eastern Poland, that a large Jewish population
came under Russian rule. In the Nineteenth Century their number was more than
five million — the largest Jewish community in the world. Today it has shrunk
to two million, the third largest Jewish population.

Czar Nicholas I regarded
the Jews as “an anarchic, cowardly, parasitic people, damned perpetually
because of their deicide and heresy . . . best dealt with by repression,
persecution, and, if possible, conversion.”[39] In 1827 he ordered that each Jewish community deliver up a quota
of military conscripts. Jewish recruits were to serve 25 years in the army.
Considerable efforts were made to bring the recruits — often twelve or
thirteen years old — into the Russian Orthodox Church. A Yiddish song from
those days expresses Jewish anguish: “Tears flow in the streets/One can
wash oneself in children’s blood/Little doves are torn from school/And dressed
up in goyish clothes . . . “[40]

From 1835 until the
revolution in 1917, Jews were mainly confined to the Pale of Settlement, a wide
strip running along the western border of the Russian Empire from the Baltic to
the Black Sea that centered on Kiev, though Jews were barred from the city
itself unless given special residence permits.

In 1882 laws were passed
further limiting Jewish rights of residence so that the country might be
“cleansed” of Jews. Jewish were forbidden to do business on Sundays
or Christian holidays. The number of Jewish students allowed into Russian
schools was limited to ten percent in secondary schools within the Pale, five
percent elsewhere, and three percent in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1890
Moscow’s chief of police ordered that the signs of Jewish shops must carry the
full Hebrew name of the owner. The following year, at Passover, the Jews were
altogether expelled from the city.

In cities and towns where
Jews were allowed, they lived in constant danger. In 1903, one pogrom reached
world attention when the 50,000 Jews of Kishinev were attacked by mobs stirred
up by anti-Semitic articles in a local newspaper. In the course of two days 45
Jews were killed, 86 gravely wounded and hundreds injured. More than 1500
houses and shops were destroyed. In a pogrom in Odessa that same year, 300 Jews
died.

Many Jews presented
themselves for baptism but often it was only an act of grief by those who
despaired of survival and opportunity except as Christians. Hundreds of
thousands of Jews packed up what little they could carry and went to far away
places like America that promised a better life. Others, motivated by Zionism,
managed to get to Palestine. Still others, more hopeful of the possibilities
for change in Russia, joined movements for reform and revolution.

Once the revolution
occurred, Jews who continued to follow traditional religious life were as much
victims as any other group of believers, at times even more, given pervasive
anti-Semitism. (Nor were the anti-Bolsheviks any better. A poster published by
the Whites during the civil war showed the giant figure of a diabolic Leon
Trotsky, naked except for a star of David around his neck, sitting on the
Kremlin wall, looking down with satisfaction on a field of skulls.)

In response to the
continuing Zionist movement among Jews, the Soviet government established a
number of Jewish settlements. In the twenties a “Jewish homeland” was
created in the far east in the thinly settled territory of Birobidzhan. It was
no promised land.

During the Second World
War, the areas of the most concentrated Jewish settlement, the former Pale,
were occupied by the German army. Countless thousands of Jews were shot and
hanged. In one place alone, a ravine west of Kiev called Babi Yar, between
100,000 and 200,000 people, mainly Jews, were executed by the German army. Nor
was the killing always done by the Germans. In Lvov, Ukrainians carried out a
three-day pogrom in the days immediately following the German occupation. An
Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists was set up which pledged obedience to
Hitler in building a Europe “free of Jews and Bolsheviks.”

In 1961 Yevgeni
Yevtushenko, revolted with the resurgence of anti-Semitism, wrote a poem that
began with the comment that there was no monument at Babi Yar. He identified
with the victims:

In 1962 Shostakovich set
the poem to music in his Thirteenth Symphony, but it was suppressed shortly
after its debut by authorities who insisted that anti-Semitism had been
eliminated in the USSR. In 1976, in belated answer to the poem and symphony, a
monument was erected at Babi Yar.

Though the Soviet Union
voted in favor of the creation of the state of Israel, in later years Zionists
were persecuted. Officially sanctioned anti-Zionism provided a fresh opening
for anti-Semitism.

While Yiddish was accepted
as the national language of Jews, many of those learning and teaching Hebrew
were sent to labor camps. One young Zionist, Anatoly Shcharansky, was accused
of treason in 1978 and spent eight years in prisons and camps before finally
being permitted to move to Israel.

Despite all their sorrows,
Jews persist in the USSR and the majority have no plans to move. Some dare to
hope that a page is being turned in Soviet history and that at last they need
not hide their faith, live in fear or envy those who have left the country. But
all Jews look with alarm at renewed public expressions of anti-Semitism
occurring due to the removal of censorship and the emergence of such
nationalist movements as Pamyat in which anti-Semites receive a warm
welcome.

Kiev

At Kiev’s Jewish synagogue
January 12, 1989, dawn was beginning to color the grey sky. Women were
clustered outside the synagogue doors. Rabbi Isaac Fuchs greeted us with
“Shalom” and brought us into a large hall with a balcony.

The walls were mainly blue
with clouds and stars painted on the ceiling. Over the place where the Torah
scrolls are kept was the Hebrew text: “Thou shalt make no graven
image.” Several men were in conversations in back while in the front a
dozen men in prayer garments were reciting the Kaddish, each person praying
independently, at his own speed. The sound was a quiet, warm babble. One old
man with a medal on his jacket read his prayer book with a magnifying glass,
reading slowly, giving each word the attention a jeweler might give a diamond.
One man stopped in the aisle and stared at me warily but another man took me
under his wing. Rabbi Fuchs, in his forties, was the youngest member of the
weekday congregation.

In the rabbi’s office
afterward, Elia Levitas told me of the founding in Kiev of a Society of Jewish
Culture on November 22, 1988. “This is a consequence of radical changes
going on right now. Finally we have the chance to communicate our culture.
Practically everything is possible. Nobody seeks to govern us, to instruct or
impede. In fact they even give us help.”

What will the Society do?
“We are preparing to open a Jewish Cultural Center in Kiev and we also
hope to establish a Jewish Museum in the building where the author Sholem
Aleichem lived. We have requested it but the authorities have not yet responded
to our proposal.”

What about religious
education for Jews? “We have asked permission to open a two-year school to
prepare teachers of Yiddish and Hebrew. Also we have applied to talk to the
Ukrainian Ministry of Education about offering a course for those who want to
learn about Judaism. We want to ask teachers to talk to the parents of children
about this. We have a Yiddish publication in which there will be a series of
articles on teaching Hebrew to yourself.”

What about anti-Semitism in
the Ukraine? “It is not right just to accuse the Ukraine. My studies
remind me that unfortunately many places are distinguished by anti-Semitism. I
am compiling a bibliography of books on the history of Jews and Jewish communities
in Russia in the period from 1700 to the present. So far I have described
14,000 books from libraries all over the Soviet Union as well as in a number of
other countries — Israel, France and Spain.”

I asked Rabbi Fuchs about
the synagogue’s history. “It is old. The building dates from the
Eighteenth Century. According to tradition, Peter the Great laid a stone in the
foundation. It has been used continuously except during the German occupation.
It was re-opened in 1946. Another synagogue has opened in Lvov and the Jewish
population in Harkov wants to open a synagogue there. There are also some
Jewish preaching houses in towns near Kiev. The Kiev synagogue is second in
rank after the synagogue in Moscow. On weekdays normally twenty take part in
the prayer service, mainly retired people. On Saturdays about 100 come. On
feast days the synagogue is filled and surrounded — if the weather is good,
perhaps 25,000 come. We have a second hall that we open for feast days. Also we
have a mikva [for ritual baths], a bakery where we make matzo —
1200 kilos a day, and a room for slaughtering chickens in the kosher way.
We receive support from Jews in other countries — 30,000 tons of special flour
for matzo has been given to us by Jews in France.”

Irkutsk

The synagogue in Irkutsk
includes a small factory where I found seven people making matzo bread.
At one end of the room the dough was made and passed through rollers before
being cut into rectangles on a long table and put into the wood-fired oven for
quick baking. The smell of fresh-baked matzo brought back memories of
the years I lived on the Lower East Side in New York where many of my older
neighbors where Russian and Ukrainian Jews.

In an adjacent room a large
photo hung on the wall commemorating the 1,667 Jews from the Irkutsk Oblast who
fought and died in the last world war. “Nobody is forgotten, nothing is
forgotten,” said the text over the picture.

My visit happened to
coincide with a day of remembrance for the dead. “Many people from the
synagogue will visit our two Jewish cemeteries,” said the vice-chairman of
the Synagogue Council, Mordecai Levenson.

We walked to the front of
the synagogue to the cabinet where the Torah scrolls are stored, a practice
similar to the Catholic custom of having a place behind the altar for the
consecrated bread that has become Christ’s body. The Torah is a sign of God’s
living presence. The warden gently kissed the Torah as he lifted it out, just
as Orthodox Christians kiss the Bible.

“Our synagogue is 108
years old,” he said, “though there were seven years when it was
closed, 1937 to 1944. We succeeded to stay open in the Khrushchev years, a time
when 8,600 places of worship were closed.

I asked how it was that
Jews first came to Irkutsk. “Mostly as prisoners, people sent into exile,
but for a long time we couldn’t come to Irkutsk. Only Christians. Irkutsk was a
city and the Russian law used to be — before 1917 — that Jews couldn’t live
in a city except by permission. To get permission you had to be a doctor, a merchant
— not some common person. So Jews lived in villages and towns. Not only could
you not live in a city, you couldn’t even go to a city without permission. If
your child was sick, before you could take it to the doctor, you had to have
permission to enter the city. If more treatment was needed, more permission was
needed. If you were one of those few Jews permitted to live in the city, you
had to do it discreetly. Otherwise you would be sent away.”

He introduced me to an
elderly woman, Leah Isayevna Eseyona, whose grandparents were exiles. I asked
how it happened. “Grandfather was a soldier in the army,” she said,
“very tall and handsome! One day he went to a restaurant with his friends.
As a Jew he wasn’t supposed to go inside but he didn’t look Jewish. An officer
saw him and knew he was Jewish. He came up to the table and said, ‘Jews are
prohibited.’ My grandfather was a temperamental person. He knocked the officer
down. For this he was sent to Siberia. My grandmother came with him. She was
pregnant at that time. There was another child she couldn’t bring. That boy
grew up in Russia with his uncle. My grandparents never left Siberia. It was
permanent exile. They had six sons and two daughters born in Siberia. Until the
revolution, they lived in a village. It was better in some ways than it would
have been in Russia. No troubles, except Jews weren’t allowed to attend school.
After the revolution our family moved to Irkutsk and the children went to
school.”

“But Jews also came
here more recently,” another woman said. “My family was evacuated to
this region during the war. I was 14. The war was terrible and we had a lot of
trouble getting here. It was a very hard life. At first we didn’t live in the
city, but then I got a job at a factory in Irkutsk and worked there for 40
years, my husband for 47. He was an engineer and I was a designer.”

Rabbi Mordecai Cohen came
to sit with us. “But in the earlier time, you couldn’t even change your
village. They sent you to a certain village and you had to stay there. It was
like a prison. We didn’t have the right to trade or to own land. A Jew could
only rent land.”

Given the restrictions of
the Nineteenth Century, how could a synagogue be founded in Irkutsk?
“Gradually things changed. One by one certain Jews got permission to live
here. Finally they allowed the Jews to have a place to pray and so our
synagogue was started.”

“When they were
building the Tikhvin Church,” said a bearded man who joined the
conversation, “they needed someone to do the windows. My great grandfather
was a craftsman living in Zima, northwest of Irkutsk, and he was good at
glasswork. Someone said to the priest in Irkutsk there was this Jew in Zima,
just the right man to do the church windows! (laughing) So he was hired and
came to Irkutsk to do this job. He did it perfectly, so well that the priest
asked what reward he wanted. He asked for the remains of the glass, but the
priest said no, this was too valuable. So he made a second request, to have
permission to live in Irkutsk. The archpriest was willing. He wrote to the
governor and the governor signed the paper and our family came to
Irkutsk.”

How is the situation today?
“Today we have 5000 Jews in Irkutsk and the situation is good for
us,” the rabbi said. “We get a higher education. We get good jobs. We
can make matzo. We can pray.”

“My son is a
journalist,” said Leah Isayevna Eseyona with great pride.

But, I pointed out, a lot
of Jews seem to be having serious problems. Many are anxious to leave the
country for Israel or the United States. “How can they leave their
motherland?” Leah Isayevna asked. “How? I couldn’t. I read the
newspapers and I understand. I know one Jew who was forced to leave. But I
don’t want to leave. You only travel from one trouble to another.”

Are the current changes
making life better for Jews than before? “Jews are able to study Hebrew —
it used to be forbidden,” said Mordecai Levenson. “We are getting
prayer books from the United States.” He showed me a copy. “In some
places there are synagogues being re-opened. Jewish cultural centers are
beginning. There is a Jewish museum being started in Moscow and a Jewish
theater named Shalom. It is better.”

What about religious
education? “We don’t want to teach religion in public school,” said
the rabbi. “You cannot teach someone to believe in God. The will of each
person is cultivated in the family. But we want the chance for religious
studies for those who wish it. We think this is starting now.”

On the way out Mordecai
Levenson gave me a carton of matzo still warm from the oven. “Just
in case you get hungry.”

Baku

The morning service was
over when we arrived at the synagogue in Baku in May. The rabbi and members of
the synagogue council were awaiting us at a table in the back of the synagogue
set with tea, soft drinks, fruit, cookies and candy.

One of the council members
was a teacher of English. “I am one of the few members of the synagogue
actually born in Baku,” he said. “Most come from the Ukraine.”

The rabbi, Israel
Moiseyevich Berchick, introduced himself. He was born in 1909 in Bogoslav, near
Kiev, and moved to Baku in 1930. He was unshaven and had a round, lined face.
“The congregation on a typical Saturday is about fifty people,” he
said, “but on feasts the synagogue is full and more than full.”

I asked if there were many
Jews in Azerbaijan. “According to the last census, there are 300,000 Jews
in Azerbaijan. Most are in Baku but there are two synagogues elsewhere in the
republic.”

What effect has perestroika
had on Jewish life in Azerbaijan? “It is first of all a change of
atmosphere, something you feel. But it shows in other ways. We are getting the
books we need, the Torah, prayer books, a history book. Now we have a secondary
school where we teach Hebrew — both youngsters and middle-aged people are
coming to study. There were people from religious communities elected as
deputies. In the years of stagnation no one could imagine such things. Still I
want to stress that we had our synagogue long before the perestroika process.
Faith is faith. But now it is easier for people to come who were hesitating
before. More people come.”

The chairman of the
synagogue council, Mark Isaakovich Gartsman, also Ukrainian, was born in 1910.
He was a thin man in a tidy grey suit. “It’s strange,” he said,
“but the celebration of the Baptism of Russia was something that was good
for Jews. After that there were a number of positive events, even big changes.
I visited the Council for Religious Affairs and we had good talks. They said
that the former restrictions would be gradually removed.”

What problems existed in
the past? (long pause) “Synagogue-goers felt that they were somehow under
supervision. There was a feeling of control. The international climate was
tense. Relations with other countries were a factor. Whatever the cause, you
could feel it in your skin. Now a believer can feel at ease, not like
before.”

How did it happen that so
many Ukrainian Jews came to Azerbaijan? “The Ukraine was a hard place for
us. It was a hard environment. There were pogroms and there wasn’t enough food.
I was the oldest child in my family. I had five sisters. We came to Baku in
1931.”

Have there ever been
pogroms here? “Never. Throughout all my years living here, I always felt
that the local people respected Jews. It can’t be compared to the Ukraine or
Russia. And after the war, it got even worse in those places, especially the
Ukraine.”

We were interrupted by a
desperate woman who asked if I could help her get medicine for her son, three
years old, who has leukemia. The prescribed drugs weren’t available in Baku.
She had gone to Moscow for two months but couldn’t obtain them there either.
Could I send them from the west?[42]

“You see the problems
we face,” said Maria Bakun, the synagogue bookkeeper and cashier,
“Jews along with everybody. But Jews were never mistreated here. Never.
Many Azeris marry Jews. There are some things Jews and Moslems have in common,
so we often marry. My sister is married to a Byelorussian. In my family we
celebrate all the religious feasts — Jewish, Moslem and Christian.”

“But now,” said
Mark Gartsman, “you see a new wave of anti-Semitism, not here but in
Russia and the Ukraine. When there is more freedom, it is also used by evil
people.”

Do your children share your
attachment to the synagogue? “Not yet. I have three sons, all married,
three granddaughters and one grandson. My sons show their respect. But they
don’t understand the service. They don’t know Hebrew. In other countries Jews
have not only the synagogue but many programs to hold them together — social
centers, cafes, schools. So far we don’t have such things. But now it is
possible to study Hebrew and we think this will help.”

MOSLEMS

Beginning with Grand Prince
Dimitri Donskoi’s victory against the Golden Horde in 1380 at the Battle of
Kulikovo Field, Russia’s borders were outward bound. In the Fifteenth Century
Moscow had its first Czar, Ivan III, under whose rule Russia became the largest
state in Europe. By the Sixteenth Century, with the incorporation of Siberia,
Russia stretched to the Pacific. In the Seventeenth Century the eastern Ukraine
was annexed, bringing Russia to the Black Sea. In the Eighteenth Century, Peter
the Great, having fought his way to the Baltic while in other battles he pushed
the border south to the Caspian Sea into the world of Islam. In the Nineteenth
Century the Empire captured huge Moslem territories: Azerbaijan, Kazakstan and
Turkistan and with these Baku, Bukhara, Tashkent and Samarkand, famed centers
of Islamic studies.

Along with other religions,
Moslems fared badly under Soviet rule. In the thirties most mosques were
confiscated and many were destroyed. Islamic schools were closed and thousands
of Moslem leaders sent into the gulag.

Following a rebellion
against Soviet rule in the north Caucasus in the winter of 1940-41, Stalin
transferred a million Moslems to Siberia and Kazakstan. In the process the
entire Chechen-Ingesh Autonomous Republic was dissolved and all the mosques
within it destroyed.[43] (After Stalin’s death the republic was restored, though it was
not until 1978 that any mosques were opened.) In 1942 Stalin agreed to meet the
Mufti of Ufa, Abdurrahman Rasulaev, one of the few Moslem leaders to have
survived the purges that occurred in the period 1932-38 when Moslem clerics
were hunted down as foreign agents and saboteurs. Afterward relations between
the government and Islam were “normalized.” As a result of the
meeting four Spiritual Directorates[44] — later called Boards — were established, one for Central Asia
and Kazakstan, another for European Russia and Siberia, a third for the North
Caucasus and Dagestan, and a fourth for Transcaucasia. All working mosques are
under the supervision of the respective boards. All Moslem clerics are
registered with them and paid by them.[45]

One staff member of the
Council for Religious Affairs admitted to me in 1988 that, before Gorbachev
came to power, the main direction in Soviet policy in regard to Moslems
“was to eliminate Islamic consciousness.” As late as 1986, when
Gorbachev was in his first year in power, the First Secretary of the Uzbekistan
Communist Party, addressing the Communist Party Congress in Moscow, spoke of
“old prejudices and harmful customs” still surviving. He attacked
“class enemies” who utilized the “Islamic factor” to
undermine Soviet power. In Tashkent, he registered alarm at the growing number
of unregistered Islamic associations providing religious education.[46]

Tashkent

Arriving in the central
Asian republic of Uzbekistan in January 1989, I discovered not one Tashkent but
two — one old, traditional and Moslem, the other new, European and secular.
The European Tashkent had wide avenues dominated by high concrete apartment
buildings similar to those in every Soviet city except there were screens built
into the facades to provide some shelter from the sun. The traditional Tashkent
beyond the Ankhor and Bozsu Canals was a city of winding, narrow streets and
low rambling buildings squeezed together. Each house had its own yard, vines
and a few fruit trees.

In earthquake-prone
Tashkent, the modern city was not only less attractive but more dangerous. The
last major earthquake, a monument at the epicenter indicates, was on April 26,
1966. Three hundred thousand people where made homeless and 35 percent of the
buildings were destroyed. Those were the days of minimizing catastrophe — the
number who died isn’t indicated. Though new buildings are earthquake resistent,
should there be a quake of 1966 proportions, there is the danger that many will
die in the modern buildings. But the old city will again survive and those
inside the one and two-storey wood and mud buildings walk out alive. Walls will
disintegrate and windows will break but the wooden structure will remain.

“Our ancestors were
better architects,” commented my host, Hassan Aka Turabekov, translator as
well as chief editor of Uzbekistan’s Literature and Art Publishing House. He
resembled the old city more than the new — a large man in rumpled clothes, his
tie loose and off center. He was face round as the moon, black hair beginning
to grey, light brown skin. “The old houses are nicer to live in, more
humane, cooler in the summer, and better for earthquakes. The old architecture
is also better for making community. In the mahala [neighborhood]
everyone knows each other. Everyone takes part in weddings and funerals. But in
these high-rise buildings you don’t even know who lives in the next apartment.
It is an architecture of disconnection. It is also uncomfortable. Concrete
holds the heat. In the summer it is like an oven inside. But the new buildings
go up and people are forced to live in them. They feel grief. They can no
longer eat and sleep outside.

“On the other hand,
there is the problem of being the capital of Uzbekistan. Tashkent has grown
rapidly. When I was a boy, about 600,000 people lived here. Now it is about
2,000,000. We Uzbeks like to have children. Our birthrate is one of the highest
in the USSR.”

I asked if the city was
mainly populated by Uzbeks. “In the city it is about forty percent Russian
and forty percent Uzbek. The rest include Tartars, Jews, and Ukrainians. But in
the countryside it is mainly Uzbeks.”

How do the different
nationalities relate? “Usually very well. Uzbeks have a strong culture of
hospitality. Our tradition requires a fence between neighbors but always a door
in the fence and the door is never locked.”

What else is traditional in
Uzbek life? “It is very simple, good life. There is little furniture in
the home. There is much singing. In the city people keep birds — it is
nostalgia for life close to nature. But now life is threatened. Quail near the
cities are dying of chemical pollution. There was a particularly dangerous
defoliant being used on the field — it was supposed to make the cotton
leafless for machine picking. It has done much harm to people and the
environment. Only last year was this substance banned. Because of glasnost journalists
were able to interview scientists and write about it. Public opinion became a
factor.”

Over lunch in a rambling
country restaurant, Hassan Aka explained that Uzbeks believe the place one eats
should resemble paradise. “This is why it is usual to have plants and
birds near the table,” he said. I counted sixteen birds in cages between
windows, including a nightingale, several canaries and a quail.

I asked how he had become a
translator. “In my third year at the university I began a translation of
Tolstoy’s War and Peace. After graduation I was invited to teach literature
at the university. A year later, in 1962, I had the chance to join the
editorial board of the one publisher in Tashkent. Since then my time has been
divided between translation, editing and publishing. We are doing some
important books. The most important was the annotated Koran we issued earlier
this year. Seventy-five thousand copies were printed. The edition sold out in a
couple of days.”

Is religious education
needed to overcome so many years of atheist indoctrination? “It is needed,
but not in a classroom. No one can put religious truth on a plate and serve it
to us. We each have to dig it out of the earth with our own hands. Unfortunately
most people don’t understand this. If you try to educate your children in the
morality of happiness but you fail to teach them to pay attention to the
happiness of others, it is no morality at all, and no true happiness either. If
my happiness is selfish, I condemn my children to unhappiness. It is an endless
chain. My personal happiness is connected to my wish for the happiness of
all.”

What changes are needed in
readjusting local practices in Uzbekistan to respect Moslem tradition?
“One problem that Moslems face in any secular society is that there is no
provision to go to the mosque on Fridays. Friday is just another work day. But
here provisions are made for Moslem feast days — for example special buses to
assist people coming to the mosque. On a feast day, we would have a hard time
getting near the mosque, the crowds would be so big.”

What impact is perestroika
having locally? “It was largely because of the family contract team
that the last cotton harvest was so big. Each team gets a piece of land — how
big it is depends on the size of the family. The family unit can be quite big
when you start adding in aunts and uncles, brothers, sisters, cousins. People
in them earn more than they did in the past and can provide for themselves
better than before. There is also a form of family contract team for certain
businesses — food service and catering cooperatives, for example, cafes and
snack bars where you can sit down and eat the national food. In this area
Uzbekistan is in the front rank. It is our tradition. We descend from famous
traders. Uzbek traders have spread all over the world. Tashkent was the a main
intersection of the Silk Road, a meeting place of east and west.

“But I think the main
result of perestroika so far is that we are beginning to know happiness,
not the happiness of paradise, but the happiness of not having to live a
two-faced life — one face for the rostrum, another for the corridor. It is the
happiness of being able to speak openly and honestly.”

Back in the city, we
stopped at the Kook-cha Mosque, one of the oldest in Tashkent. In the cemetery
a funeral was in progress. We watched from a distance while Hassan explained
the Uzbek funeral customs. “The Moslem funeral tradition is to be buried
with your head toward Mecca. There is no coffin. A cloth is put over the body
and then the hole is filled with earth. The imam reads from the Koran, ‘May
your grave be full of light and may you be received by Allah in heaven.’
Everyone present takes part in the prayers. Then the son or brother or a close
relative stands in front to take responsibility for any debts of the deceased,
but I have never heard of anyone making a claim for payment of debts. With
death all debts are forgiven. Allah akbar! [Great is Allah.] Then three
days after the funeral friends come to the home. There are readings from the
Koran and then a big meal. Then every Thursday for twenty days, just before
sunset, there is a similar gathering and then another twenty days later there
is a big commemoration where pilaf is served. They cook forty kilos of
rice and add meat, carrots and spices. There will also be pancakes, fruit and
other things to eat, and of course bread and salt. Perhaps 1500 people come, or
2,000.

“When I was more
ignorant, I was put off by the custom of a common meal after a funeral. When
someone is dead how can you rejoice? But one of the seven deadly sins is to be
gloomy in your heart. If I become gloomy, perhaps you will become gloomy too.
But if I smile, perhaps you will smile. My joy can become your joy. And joy is
the major gift we can give to each other.”

In the old part of Tashkent
near the bazaar, in an office adjacent to the city’s main mosque, Tillya-Shaikh
Jami, we were received by Sheik Abdulghani Abdullah, editor of Moslems of
the Soviet East and Deputy Chairman of the Moslem Religious Board for
Central Asia and Kazakhstan. We sat around a table laid with fruit, bread and
nuts. Tea was served in orange porcelain cups. Sheik Abdullah was wearing a
white turban and green jacket.

“This is the center of
Moslem administration,” he said, “not only for Uzbekistan but the
four surrounding republics — Kazakstan, Kirgizstan, Tadzhikistan and
Turkmenistan. There are three similar boards in other regions. Except in
Azerbaijan where there are Shi’ites, our Moslem population in the Soviet Union
is mainly Sunite.”

How many mosques are there
in Tashkent? “Seventeen plus many places of prayer in private homes. In
Central Asia, there are now about 260 mosques registered and in the USSR
altogether about 600. It is impossible to say the exact number because so many
are now being registered.”

I asked about his past.
“Both my grandfather and father were Moslem clergy. My father studied at
several Moslem institutes but made his living as an agricultural worker. When I
was fifteen I was sent to Bukhara to study and remained there for nine years,
until 1954, except for the time of my army service. I later had the chance to
study in Cairo and then was teaching at the Moslem school in Bukhara. For the
last twenty years I have been editor of the magazine of the Moslem Religious
Board for Central Asia. Since 1975 I have been the Board’s Vice Chairman.”

What is the effect of perestroika
for Moslems? “Quite a lot is happening. Two mosques are re-opening
here in Tashkent and similar are events are going on wherever Moslems are
living. We have about 500 mosques now and hope to have 1000. How soon depends
on the local people and how effectively and quickly they promote the
possibilities.”

What about theological
education? “We have a madrassah [a Moslem college] with a seven-year
program in the Uzbek city of Bukhara. The basic course includes the study of
Arabic, the Koran and its interpretation, traditions concerning the Prophet,
Islamic law and history, as well as courses you would find in any college —
language study, history, geography, literature, science and so forth. From
Bukhara a smaller number comes to the Islamic Institute here in Tashkent for an
advanced four-year program. Also we send students to Egypt, Jordan, Syria,
Libya and other countries for study.”

What about publishing
activities? “Now we are preparing a new edition of the Holy Koran.”

A large enough edition to
meet the demand? “With more than 50,000,000 Moslems in the Soviet Union,
it will take a long time to fill the gap. There was too long a time when the
Koran was not published — the stagnation years. But we are also receiving
copies of the Koran from outside, especially from Saudi Arabia. They are
sending some in Uzbek translation as well as in Arabic.”

Fifty million Moslems?
“If you count all those with Moslem names, in fact it would be about
60,000,000, but at present the majority do not follow Moslem traditions.”

How would you compare the
situation of Moslems in the Soviet Union with that of Moslems in other parts of
the world? “In some ways it is better. There is a higher educational level
here than in much of the Moslem world. Though there are problems, still we
don’t know poverty, unemployment and hunger. Now with perestroika there
is a much better possibility to provide religious education. Articles about
Islam are in the press. There are religious programs on television. These are
remarkable events. The state doesn’t fear more people becoming Moslem. In fact
we even have the impression that the state wants more believers.”

Was the repression of
Moslems in former times severe? “Yes. Many honest people — peasants,
workers, teachers, clergy — were sent away and never came back. Mosques were
closed. Some were blown up — remarkable places, monuments of culture. It was a
test on behalf of Allah. This is what we believe. But people persevered in
their faith. They did not surrender their souls.”

How extensive was the
social damage? “Severe and yet the culture has survived. For example the
Uzbek tradition of respect for older people, including non-relatives, has been
preserved. We still prefer to live in our one and two-storey houses. We like to
be close to nature and have the sky over our heads. People are still building
such houses.”

Are Moslems engaging in
charitable work in hospitals? “Not yet, but on the other hand, because of
our tradition, old people are kept within the family. We consider it shameful
to neglect a father or mother. The Moslem view is that, if you do not care for
the aged as the Koran commands, then it is no good to pray five times a day. So
we take care for our relatives in our homes. But if someone must be in the
hospital, his relatives provide for him so fully that there is no need for the
mosque to establish any program of further assistance. Our responsibility is
not only for relatives but for anyone. It is our tradition to share our food
with the stranger.”

How is the ferment in the
rest of the Moslem world being felt in the Soviet Union? “There are fundamentalists
and sectarians here but not many.”

We walked across the street
to the Islamic Institute to see the new library, a place of such beauty that I
was reminded of the Alhambra palaces Moslems built in the south of Spain. The
display cases contained Korans produced in Tashkent over the centuries.

“All the books in the
library have come to us as gifts. Not only our students but many others are
coming to use the library — scholars, scientists, scholars of Arabic. All are
welcome. The preparation of the library took one year with no days off. It was
a work of love.”[47]

Samarkand

Samarkand, among the oldest
cities of central Asia, was one of the paradises of the world according to
Jules Verne. It has been ruled by Greeks, Persians, Arabs, Mongols and Uzbeks.
In the Fourteenth Century, it was taken by the Tatar warrior king, Tamerlane,
who intended to make it the capital of the world. For centuries it was a major
center of Moslem scholarship. With the decline of the Silk Road, it fell into
such decay that it was uninhabited for half the Eighteenth Century. When the
region was incorporated into the Russian Empire in the late Nineteenth Century,
Samarkand became the provincial capital.

The heart of the city is
the Registan Square, enclosed on all but one side by three madrassahs, each
with its own mosque. The buildings are presently a museum complex. One
madrassah was founded by Uleg Beg, the scholar and astronomer who ruled
Samarkand after Tamerlane’s death. The mosque of the Tillah-Kari madrassah in the
center is not only the most beautiful in Samarkand but is among the world
treasures of religious architecture. The pattern of ascending gold leaves in
the mosque’s ultramarine dome seemed like an opening to heaven.[48]

The most vital spot in the
city was the bazaar with its miles of round bread, apples, melons,
pomegranates, dried fruit, milk balls, and many kinds of raisins and nuts.
Still more impressive were the faces, many of them old: men with silky white
beards, woman with round faces sipping steaming tea.

We drove to the mosque and
mausoleum of Abu Al-Bukhari at the village of Khartank, a place of pilgrimage
for Moslems from many countries. Our host, Imam Hatib Alimov Usman Khan, was a
man of 38 with a short black beard, thoughtful face and calm manner. He wore a
deep blue robe, fur hat, vest and multi-colored shirt.

“To understand why our
mosque is so important to Islam you must learn about Al-Bukhari, revered by the
entire Moslem world because his collection of the sayings of the Prophet, is
buried here. His great work was the al-Jami as-Sahih, second only to the
Koran. Two years after his birth in Bukhara in 809, his father died. His
mother, a scholar and scientist, gave him his initial education. When he was
seven he knew the entire Koran by heart. At age ten he had memorized several
thousand speeches of the Prophet. When he was sixteen, with his mother and
older brother, he undertook the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. For forty
years, travelling from Cairo to central Asia, he studied sayings and actions
ascribed to the Prophet, accepting for inclusion in his encyclopedia only those
traditions he judged most reliable. This is arranged according to subject,
allowing the reader to study accounts of the Prophet’s teachings and actions on
points of law and religious doctrine. Al-Bukhari also wrote a commentary on the
Koran and the biographies of persons forming the living chain of transmission
of traditions back to the Prophet. He finally returned to Bukhara but, for
refusing to provide private tutoring for the children of the governor, was sent
into exile. On his way to Samarkand, he died in 869 among his relatives at
Khartang. Now many come to this holy place to show their respect to this great
person. In the last three years pilgrims have included the Prime Ministers of
several Moslem states.”

I asked about his
background. “My parents are believers. My father is not a clergyman but he
knows the Koran very well. I have three brothers. One is a driver, the second a
team leader on a state collective farm, the third is head of a secondary
school. All of us can read Arabic easily. Two are believers. I wanted to go to
the madrassah either in Bukhara or Tashkent. At the time it was very difficult
to do this. I made several vain attempts to enter. It took seven years but
finally I was able to enter the madrassah in Tashkent. Now the outside
obstacles are gone although there is still a limited number of places within
the schools.”

I asked about home mosques.
“On Friday, our day of prayer and rest, every Moslem is obliged to come to
the mosque to pray. If you were here on a Friday, you would find a big crowd,
in the summer especially, when they come not only from Samarkand but from
distant countries. But there are many people living too far away from a mosque
so a place is arranged in someone’s house, a convenient place of prayer that is
nearby. You find these home mosques in practically every neighborhood and
village.”

What changes are occurring
locally? “We have a more positive response when we meet officials from the
Council for Religious Affairs. We are able to open more mosques. Some have
already opened and we expect many more to open in the coming years. It is much
easier for us to do our work. At this mosque we used to have two imams. Now we
have nine. We serve several outlying parishes. It is much easier for us to meet
the peoples’ needs for weddings and funerals done according to shari’ah [Moslem
law].”

Are people who were not
religiously active beginning to follow the practices of Islam? “Yes,
although this is something that happens little by little. A Moslem should pray
five times a day — before sunrise, just before noon, in the late afternoon,
just after sunset, and before going to bed. Before prayer you should wash you
hands, your face and your feet. You should pray in the direction of Mecca. But
if you are a young person working in a factory, how can you stop and pray? It
is much easier for people who have retired. But we see that on feast days more
people are coming to the mosque.”

Many people associate Islam
with intolerance and violence. Is this justified? “The Koran teaches us
that God gave life to the earth and all people and that, no matter what tribe
or nation we belong to, we all descend from the same parents, Adam and Eve. We
are all leaves on the same tree and are required by God to live as one family.
Whoever believes in God and the Last Judgment will never commit any evil
against neighbors but will always help them. It is my experience that most
Moslems are peaceful people. Whoever crosses the threshold of our homes is met
with an open heart.”

How has perestroika affected
Moslems? “It means that the truth has triumphed. It is said in the Holy
Koran that lies will be trampled under by the truth. We are seeing this happen.
The truth has come and now it is easier for people to live. They can tell the
truth and live an open life without a mask.”

Flying back to Tashkent, I
saw huge, gun-studded planes on the ground. Presumably they had a role in the
war in Afghanistan. Sergei drew my attention to a poem by Yevgeni Yevtushenko,
“On Afghan Land a Russian Boy Lies Dead,” just published in the
January Ogonyok:

I was welcomed to the
mosque in Irkutsk by the imam and three other old men. The chairman of the
mosque council, Gayaz Gogalyevich Muudyenov, did most of the talking. He was
retired, living on a pension of 120 rubles a month. Imam Hatib was 89, very
frail, also living on pension. The mosque paid no salaries.

The mosque — a stone
building with Arabic script carved on the facade — was build a century ago but
was closed in 1937. “Now it is ours again except for the basement,”
said Gayaz Muudeenov. “The basement is used by the District Party
Committee. Like many other centers of worship, it was returned to believers
after the US opened the second front in 1944. Our impression was that the
re-opening of churches, mosques and synagogues was a demand US President
Roosevelt made to Stalin.”

Like so many others,
Moslems originally came to Siberia as prisoners and exiles, though others came
for work. “The four of us all come from Kazan like most local Moslems. We
worked on the railroad and also worked in construction of the hydro-electric
dam on the Angara River just beyond the city. Now there are Moslems working on
BAM [the new railroad project cutting a more northern route across Siberia to
the Pacific from Irkutsk]. And most of us fought in the war.” He showed me
an impressive medal he was wearing, the Order of the Great Patriotic War.

I asked Imam Hatib how he
came to Irkutsk. “I came here in 1916, voluntarily, just a young man
looking for work. I got a job at a factory. I was a believer already. Later I
studied at the madrassah in Ufa where I learned Arabic.”

What about repression of
Moslems? “In Central Asia it started earlier than here. Until 1937, in
eastern Siberia, we didn’t feel it. Then the purges started. Many imams and
mullahs, many faithful people, were arrested and sent to distant places, as far
away as Kamchatka.”

What effect is perestroika
having for Moslems? “In former times we weren’t allowed to write in
Arabic. We had to write with the cyrillic alphabet. Now this is changed. We can
use Arabic, publish books in Arabic, and teach Arabic to our children and any
others who want to learn. More people can study in the madrassah and we expect
to have more Moslem schools. And now mosques can be opened where believers want
them.”

What about services in the
mosque on Friday? “For observant Moslems, even if you cannot get to the
mosque, you can pray in your home after work. It is not essential for us to go
to the mosque. But we hope that it will be easier for Moslems to come to the
mosque. At the mosque you can be more open to Allah.”

Can Soviet Moslems make the
pilgrimage to Mecca? “It isn’t easy but it is possible. People go every
year, but you have to have the wallet for it! It costs four or five thousand
rubles. To do it you write to the Mufti, and he applies to the International Affairs
Department at the Moslem Central Board office in Moscow. This office collects
all the applications and sends the group.”

What hopes have you for the
new legislation on freedom of conscience? “First of all we want to teach
our children in their native language. We don’t mind that they learn Russian
but we want them educated in our own language. We want our Moslem children to
have access to the books of the Moslem world.”

Are there enough Korans?
“The Mufti of Siberia, Talgat Dajetdinov, has been given permission to
publish 50,000 Korans and 10,000 copies of the Sayings of the Prophet. These
are for the Siberian region. There are editions being published in the other
three regions as well. So the situation is much better but still there is far
to go.”

Baku

Baku juts into the Caspian
Sea like a hawk’s beak. Despite the ethnic tension between Azeris and
Armernians, in May 1989 the clues to the real state of things — tanks by the
government house, the curfew in the small hours of the night — were few. A
Muscovite could walk down vine-covered streets into markets with abundant fruit
and vegetables and think he had died and gone to heaven. On the other hand, the
traffic was so loud and merciless that might think he had died and arrived in
purgatory.

The Russian connection with
Azerbaijan dates back to 1804. In the course of wars with Persia (1804-13 and
1926-28), Russia annexed Baku plus a number of regional principalities. A
treaty established the Aras River as the border, thus dividing the Azeri people.
There is a large Azeri population in modern Iran. An independent Azerbaijan was
set up in May 1918, but from August 1918 to August 1919, British forces
occupied the city. In April 1920 the Red Army took control and created the
Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. I noticed that the local portraits of
Lenin make him look quite tropical.

Azerbaijan is the biggest
producer of grapes in the USSR, a major exporter of cotton, citrus fruits,
pomegranates, olives, tobacco, tea and saffron. But oil is king. The world’s
first deep-bore hole was drilled at an oil field near Baku. Especially outside
the city the air smells of oil. There are huge areas near Baku where oil
derricks are more crowded together than any place in Texas — barren, battered
land with nothing on it but oil rigs.

Baku’s population is mainly
Azeri — 56 percent — with 22 percent Russian and 14 percent Armenian, though
the last statistic is now badly out of date. Following the ethnic riots, many
Armenians fled. The rest of the population includes Caucasians, Jews, Tatars
and Ukrainians — nationalities first drawn to Baku at the turn of the century
by the oil boom.

“Azeris tend to have
large families,” said Fikret Zarbalyev, an editor with the Azerbaijan
Publishing Department. “Three or four children is common. And we are a
long-lived people — there were 1400 people over 90 at the time of the last
census. Even Russians tend to have larger families here than they do in
Russia.”

Fikret took me for a walk
through the old city. Joining with us were several local writers: Fikret
Akhundly, Zahid Khalil and Tehran Veliev. It was a small literary parade.

At a café across from the
Djuma Mosque, now a museum of carpets, we drank hot tea served in tulip-shaped
glass. “The tulip shape represents a flame,” Fikret said.
“Before Islam was accepted, the Azeri people revered fire. Some of the
ancient fire traditions still survive, like leaping over fire on the New Year.
But Islam has been here many centuries. Names from the Koran like Issa (Jesus),
Myriam (Mary), Mussa (Moses) and Daud (David) are popular among us.”

I asked about their
marriages. One was married to a Russian, one to an Armenian, one to a Jew —
and only one to an Azeri. “For us the family is the core matter,”
said Zahid. “You prove yourself for your family and with your family you
show that you deserve to live on the earth. It is like our saying, ‘The head
exists not to provide life’s necessities for yourself but for your family.’
From your family the circle widens to include friends and finally — ideally —
the whole world.”

The whole world, it was
admitted, is not in very good health. Locally this exhibited in massive
environmental damage caused by the oil and petro-chemical industry.

“During the [Brezhnev]
years of stagnation the only thing that mattered was what you were producing
and how much,” Zahid Khalil said, “not the impact on the environment.
There wasn’t a word about that. Brezhnev’s slogan was only that the economy
must be economical. Only after glasnost could we hold public meetings
and begin to talk about closing factories and banning chemical discharges.
Recently there was a television program about a dead zone, an area in which
life is impossible. We see the cancers caused by these factories. The question
is either to close these places or to find a way to make them safe. The First
Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party met with a group that wants to
close certain plants. A beginning is being made — one percent of one percent.
It will take many years to stop this destructive process, maybe centuries.
Perhaps only our children will begin to see the results. May the mercy of God
inspire us to do this.”

Driving into the oil
fields, we came to the fortress-like Ateshgah Temple, built by Parsees in
Eighteenth Century, a place of fire worship until 1883 when the natural fire
went out. Now a museum, the fire is burning again from gas brought in by pipe.
“The monks were fierce ascetics who saw the body as the soul’s
enemy,” said the guide. “Islam is a higher form of religion as it sees
body and soul in harmony.”

We ate lunch in a town near
the temple. “You should have bread on the table but you must have
greens,” said Zahid, concerned that I wasn’t eating enough greens. After
my hosts recited some of their own poems, we talked about recent changes in
Azerbaijan.

“One of the
differences between now and five years ago,” said Zahid, “is that
there are fewer boring meetings and the boring meetings we have now are
shorter. More important, people are telling the truth. It used to be that people
lied much more, even continually. While we cannot yet say that truth is
victorious, still you hear it more often than before. People would lie and you
knew they were lying and they knew you knew that they were lying but you
pretended it was the truth — another lie. The lie of pretending belief was an
essential courtesy. He pretended to be telling the truth and you pretended you
believed him.”

I asked if the Koran was
easily obtained in Azerbaijan. “Still not, although a Russian-language
edition of the Koran was published here last year. It was a small edition,
however, only 10,000 copies. Now a translation of the Koran into Azeri is in
preparation. It will be the first Koran to be published in our own language
since the revolution. Not all Moslems agree that the Koran should be
translated. Some prefer that the people learn Arabic so that the music of the
original can be preserved.”

The following evening we
ate at Zahid’s home — a paradise-like meal of stuffed pepper, tomato and
eggplant followed by sweet pilaf, and the local bread. “In Moslem culture
we have a deep respect for bread,” said Zahid. “After a funeral, the
tradition is that people should gather to eat. Only when the bread and salt are
taken from the table are you permitted to leave. Other food can remain on the
table, but bread and salt are sacred. It is disrespectful to leave when these
are on the table. We also have the custom that if you see someone throw bread
on the ground, you have the responsibility to pick it up and put it on a higher
place. In the villages, you kiss it first, but in the cities it seems we have
lost that custom.”

“One of
traditions,” Fikret added, “is that we swear by a piece of bread.
Also the sharing of bread is very significant for us. When you share bread with
another, you are linked forever. To share bread is a sign of opening your soul.
It means giving a piece of your heart.”

After the pilaf we stood
for a while on the apartment balcony. It was dusk. An open fire was burning
across the street. Women were walking arm in arm as women do everywhere.

He showed me a children’s
book he had written, Hello, Shertan! “Shertan is a very tiny boy,
finger-sized,” Zahid explained. “When I think about him, I can see
him. When I am absent-minded, he disappears. He is a living expression of the
saying that with a small key you can open a big door or, as Shertan says, you
can light a bonfire with a match, or, as I say, the small eyes of a child see
the whole world.”

I asked him about his
religious beliefs. “I was not raised a religious person but I always felt
respect for religion. Medieval literature, with its focus on beauty, love, the
holiness of life, helped me to understand. I learned that life is not built on
chaos and that there is something superior that evaluates and governs our
life.”

The next day we went to
Baku’s main mosque, Taza-Pir, a huge building erected in 1905. It was closed in
the thirties and reopened in 1943 when the Moslem Board for Transcaucasia was
established. Next to the mosque the madrassah was under construction. A
television crew had arrived and was setting up their cameras for filming
activities in the mosque compound.

I was the luncheon guest of
Sheikh al-Islam Allashukur Pashazada, chairman of the Moslem Religious Board
for Transcaucasia, a newly-elected Deputy to the Supreme Soviet and chairman of
the Deputies’ Committee for Prisoners in Azerbaijan. A man is his forties, he
wore a white turban and had a closely cropped black beard.

“In the past we always
talked about freedom of conscience,” he said, “but it was only words.
Treasures were vandalized. There was barbarous destruction. Lenin’s principles
were ignored — he was in favor of believers having their rights and churches
being used for their proper purposes. After the October Revolution, it was much
better for religion than it had been before. But under Stalin Lenin’s policies
on religion were abandoned and the best people perished. There were the purges,
the killing of believers and the destruction of mosques and churches. We cannot
forget what Stalin did. Not only people but culture and tradition were killed.
But only now can we speak freely about this tragedy. This is why believers
support glasnost and perestroika. These have given us so much.
Words and deeds are no longer at odds, or at least it is not normal for them to
be at odds.”

What are some of the deeds?
“We have opened twelve mosques in the last six months and we are now
preparing to open another six. We are building a theological school and we are
publishing the Koran. It is much better for us, although there are still
difficulties. There are decrees against red tape but there is still red tape.
To get back the use of a mosque means re-locating whatever the building was
being used for — a club or some organization. What should be a simple matter
takes a year, or two or three. This is the red tape that we have to cut our way
through. But my feeling now is that it isn’t the top echelon that is to blame
but the middle and low levels. There can be delays. But at least we are on the
way.”

What about publishing work?
“We are beginning to get the Koran in quantities that will meet the need.
Other books we need are being published. I am writing a book on the history of
Islam that will be published here at the end of this year or early in
1990.”

What does he expect from
the new law on freedom of conscience? “Actually, if the old law had been
properly observed, it would not have been so bad. Our main problem has not been
law but bureaucrats who ignore the law.”

He expressed distress that
many people think of Islam as a religion of violence. “The fundamental
principal of Islam is peace. We always greet each other with the word ‘salaam’
— peace. In the Koran it is taught that to deliberately kill another is evil
and that to kill one person is like killing all, but to save one life is like
saving the life of all the people. Islam is a life-centered religion. Allah
gave us the gift of life. We have this gift from the moment we are conceived
and it is our duty to guard this gift. This is the teaching of Islam.”

Later we stopped at the
Ajarbek Mosque in Baku where I had hoped to interview the imam, Ajund Gaji
Ishmael, but mainly he interviewed me: “What is the divorce rate in the
US?” he asked. “Can religious leaders be elected to political
positions? How many Moslems are there in the US Congress? How many mosques in
the US? How many in western Europe? Why do they permit this Rushdie book in the
west?”

I managed to ask if life
was changing for Moslems in the USSR. “Yes, it is better. The atmosphere
is completely different. We have a chance such as we haven’t had since the
revolution.”

Before catching a flight
back to Moscow, I met the chairman of Azerbaijan’s State Publishing Committee,
Khanbabayev Azhdar Rzayevich. “There is,” he said, “a basic
problem of any society that denies God. Where there is no God, you can’t sit
down. How can you relax in a godless universe? How can you experience
compassion?”

Then he told me a story
about compassion: “An aged woman had a camel, her only source of income.
But then the camel was stolen. There was a rich man. Among his 30 camels she
found her camel. Everyone was surprised. Why would a rich man steal a poor
woman’s only camel? And how is it possible for you to know that a certain camel
is yours? She insisted it was hers. But how can you prove it? I can prove it
she said. How? Kill her, open her chest, and on her heart you will find a scar.
The camel was killed and there on her heart was a scar! It could be easily
seen. Everyone present was amazed. The rich man gave the old woman two camels
as a gift. How, he asked her, did you know about the scar on her heart? It was
simple, she said. Two years ago the camel’s son was killed by a wolf. The camel
was so sad that I knew it must have left a mark on her heart.”

BUDDHISTS

By the time Genghis Khan
died in 1227, his warrior horsemen had conquered a land mass that stretched
from Peking to Baghdad. At its height, the Mongol Empire included all of China,
Manchuria, Korea, Tibet, lower Siberia, the Middle East as far as the Euphrates
River, the eastern Ukraine and most of Russia including Moscow. In one of the
surprises of history, many of the descendants of those ruthless warriors became
peaceful Buddhists.

The coming of Buddhism in
the Eighteenth Century and the arrival of the Trans-Siberian Railroad at the
end of the Nineteenth Century were factors that led the Buryat people from a
nomadic life as herdsmen dwelling in elk-skin tents to a settled agricultural
life, though Buryats are still famed for their skill on horseback and traces of
the old wandering life survive.

So profound was the impact
of Buddhism on its converts that it made them a people who could not bear to
kill. In the 1880s a Russian writer, G.N. Potanin, wrote of the Buryats’ twins
across the Mongol border: “Their ways are gentle. Brutal treatment of
women and children is unheard of. Crimes, especially murder, are of rare
occurrence. Russian merchants living among them assured me that during the
seven years that they had inhabited the town, they had never heard of a
murder….They abhor violence to so great an extent that when [a certain man]
was condemned to death for political offenses, no one among them would
undertake the role of executioner. A heavy bribe finally induced one of them to
carry out the sentence, but from that moment he was isolated by all and
henceforth was obliged to wander as a beggar. All men kept him at a distance.
When he stretched out his hand for alms, they gave, it is true, but at the same
time they asked him to go away.”

While Buddhists were
regarded as infidels by the czarist government and were subject to state
control under the Statute on Lamaist Clergy, the difficulties Buddhists
suffered under czarist rule were minor compared to those that came under Soviet
rule in the thirties when all the datsans (monasteries) were closed and many
lamas (monks) arrested.

Ulan Ude

In Ulan Ude in late
January, I was put up in the city guest house, a two-story mansion which a few
months before had become the residence of the only American family living east
of the Urals in the USSR: Jane and John Floyd and their sons Floyd and Patrick,
ages four and one. Formerly stationed at the Embassy in Moscow, they were in
the far east to provide a base for the U.S. On-Site Inspection Team set up
under the terms of the INF Treaty. “Few people here ever saw Americans
before,” said John Floyd. “Now U.S. military planes land here at
least once a month.”

“The Buryats are still
amazed when they see U.S. military personnel walking down the street,” said
Jane. She told me about one US soldier who discovered he could communicate with
a local Buryat child through the sign language of the deaf. Both have close
relatives who are deaf.

Much of their food, down to
the milk they drink, is flown in from Japan. “The local fruit and
vegetables are okay,” Jane explained, “but milk is delivered in what
looks like a gas truck. You bring your bucket and fill it up from a hose. I’m
not quite ready for that. But I like being here. We have made many friends. The
kids too. Floyd is learning both Russian and Buryat in a neighborhood
school.” John showed me a video of a recent day spent ice fishing with
neighbors on Lake Baikal. He was helping a local family enlarge their house.

The Buryat Autonomous
Republic is about the size of New York State. The Buryats, traditionally
Buddhist, form less than half the republic’s population of 900,000. Though an
Asian city, the dominant architecture of Ulan Ude, the capital, is Soviet. A
massive snow-dusted head of Lenin grimly dominated the city’s central square.

Many Buryats have adopted
Russian names, like my host, Vladimir Radnayev, head of the Buryat Publishing
Committee and a member of Ulan Ude’s City Council. With Mikhail Moesivich
Mulonov of the Buryat Council for Religious Affairs, we drove out of the city,
heading for the Ivolginsky Datsan, the center of Buryat Buddhism, re-opened in
1946 after being closed ten years.

The countryside we were
driving through reminded me of Wyoming: long rolling hills covered with snow,
mountains in the distance, split-rail fences, no trees, few cars. An American
cowboy would be at home. The Soviet version of the Marlboro Man would be a
Buryat.

I asked Mikhail Mulonov if
there was a school for Buddhist clergy in the Buryat Republic. “No. Until
early in this century, their education was in Tibet. Currently candidates are
sent to a school in Ulan Bator in Mongolia where there is a five-year-training
program. At the moment there are 21 Buryats preparing to become lamas at the
Gandanchekchelin Datsan in Ulan Bator. There are another twenty or thirty
Mongol students.”

What happened to Buddhism
after the Revolution? “Like other religions, it was persecuted. By the end
of the thirties all datsans were closed. Lamas were arrested and sent to labor
camps where it was hard to survive.”

After half an hour we
arrived in Ivolginsk. On one side of the road was a village of log houses, on
the other the monastic compound of similar houses gathered around a temple. The
temple — Gandan Dashi Choinkhorling — was of three stories, each of the upper
stories half the size of the one below. The corners of all three roofs of the
temple rose like wing tips. The roof of the third story was crowned with a
small golden spire. Pillars and alcoves at each level helped create a climate
of worship, playfulness and mystery. The temple was vibrant with color, all the
more intense for the bright snow and cloudless blue sky. The walls of the lower
two stories were white, the third mustard yellow. The foundation and steps
leading to the temple porch were forest green while the three doors the steps
led to were blood red. Designs in gold, shining in the sun, were painted on the
facade. The immediate visual impression was equivalent to hearing a loud gong.
I felt as if only now had I truly arrived in Asia.

Inside, sitting along the
center aisle, were 25 lamas, each at his own low table, all wearing wine-purple
robes, reciting in a monotone chant and occasionally ringing silver bells. A
labyrinth of forms, colors and images all centered on the giant golden Buddha
seated in the lotus posture at the front of the hall. Golden dragons encircled
the tall red pillars. On either side of the great Buddha along the far wall
were two tiers with statues of bodhisattvas (awakened ones who renounced
nirvana in order to save others), disciples of the Buddha, as well as a
thousand small Buddha figures.

Though I had never seen
anything like this in my life, still it was surprisingly familiar. While
Russian Orthodox churches prefer slightly less brilliant colors, the wall of bodhisattvas
had much in common with an Orthodox iconostasis. The thang-ka
(painted scrolls) hanging on the temple’s side walls between windows, while
quite different, had something in common with Orthodox icons. Both Buddhist
temple and Orthodox church reflect the conviction that every artistic gift and
every sense faculty should be mobilized in the struggle to open the soul’s eyes
and bring each person to wakefulness.

Lama Syvan introduced
himself at the end of the service and took us to the front of the temple to
look more closely at the statues. “They are not old but very beautifully
made. This temple was build only twelve years ago.”

When we paused before a
statue of Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva who embodies compassion, he
explained the figure’s many hands. “Each hand — what it is doing or
holding — has meaning. The lotus symbolizes purity, the rosary is a sign of
devotion, the wheel represents Buddhist teaching, the bow and arrow suggest the
protection of faith, the mirror stands for sharp mind or omniscience, the
vessel contains nectar — the sweetness of the Buddha’s teaching. The center
hands make the gesture of andjali associated with the mantra,
‘om-mani-padme-khum. The lower hands gesture giving.”

Before the statues was a
plate where pilgrims left offerings: ruble notes, kopeks, grain, butter and
beans. Among the gifts was a simple necklace carved from ivory.

I asked about the service
that was underway when I arrived. “Today is a big feast, the celebration
of the full moon. The Buddha was born on the day of the full moon, achieved
enlightenment on the day of the full moon, and died on the day of the full
moon. We were chanting the Heart Sutra. For feast days, we use this temple
rather than our smaller temple close by.”

How many lamas are in the
community? “Now we are 28 professed lamas. We each have our own small
house on the temple grounds.”

And how did you come here?
“I was born in 1952 within a typical Buddhist family. Both my parents were
believers. Wanting to become a lama was quite natural for me. I became a lama
when I was 28.”

How does one take the step
to become a lama? “You write a letter to the head lama. He submits your
name to the Council for Religious Affairs. Both consider your request. If you
have the permission of both, then you can train to be a lama. You cannot say
that you rely upon heaven and heaven alone. You need approval.”

How did Buddhism find its
way to this part of Asia? “In the Fourteenth Century there was a Buddhist
reform movement in Tibet, the Gelugpas, founded by a lama named Tsong-kha-pa.
He was in the tradition of Atisha, a lama of the Tenth Century who wanted to
unite all segments of Buddhism into one. Carrying forward this process, monks
of this sect succeeded in finding a way to make the Buddha’s teaching more
accessible to ordinary people. It stressed the Three Treasures — Buddha,
Dharma and Sangha. Buddha is the teacher, Dharma is his teaching, and Sangha is
his community of disciples. It was something anyone could understand, from the
highest lama to a peasant child. Buddhist missionaries from Tibet spread this
doctrine in several directions. It came to Buryatia 250 years ago.”

Has perestroika had
impact on Buddhist life in the region? “It is beginning to. The datsan in
Chita has been given back and is now under restoration though it is in quite
poor condition and much needs to be done. There is a datsan in Guzinoozyorsk
that was closed but which we hope will be returned. We await the decision. Our
request is under consideration by the Council for Religious Affairs. We also
would like to open a datsan at Elista in the Kalmyk region.”

Have you the possibility to
publish religious literature? “We are going to publish a book of sutras
translated from Tibetan into both the Buryat and Russian languages.”

Do you have access to the
mass media? “Recently a lama was on television to speak about the
environment. We expect more opportunities.”

What are the possibilities
to teach Buddhism? “We do not hold public meetings but, as you see, many
people come there, even some from the European part of the Soviet Union with no
previous connection to Buddhism. We can talk with all our visitors and discuss
any questions they have.”

How many Buryats are
Buddhist? (laughter) “How can anyone say? It’s not hundreds of thousands.
Perhaps it is 70 or 80,000 people. Perhaps it is more. There is no census on
such a subject.”

Have you contact with
Buddhists from other parts of the world? “Quite a lot. Two years ago the
Dalai Lama came to visit us.”

We walked to the smaller
temple nearby where one of the older monks, Lama Dorji, was sitting before a
drum, beating it slowly but with great force while praying. “I am praying
according to the wishes of our pilgrims,” he said. “They give us
requests to pray for their needs. I am also praying that all people will
understand each other and achieve agreements.” He showed me how the drum
should be struck. I was impressed by his enthusiasm and his drum-like voice.
Was there something he could pray for on my behalf, he asked. I gave him a
name.

One small building in the
compound contained a lilliputian model of paradise. Up to our ankles in snow,
we gazed through a window at a fabulous garden of flowers, fruit and jewels —
a world without suffering. Some of the tiny people were flying like birds.

Among the fascinated
visitors studying the scene with us were several young Soviet soldiers. Seeing
we had a lama showing the way, they joined us as we went on to the next stop, a
greenhouse that provides refuge to a Bodhi tree. “It was under such a tree
that the Buddha sat when he achieved enlightenment,” said Lama Syvan.
“This tree has that tree for its ancestor.”

We visited the datsan’s library,
as cold inside as outside. Unfortunately many of the library’s manuscripts were
lost during the years the datsan was closed, but still it is an important
collection.

We arrived at the house of
Bandido Kambo Lama Jimba-Jamso Erdyneev, president of the Religious Board of
Buddhists of the USSR. He is a round-faced old man, stooped, gentle in his
manner. Like the other lamas, his head was completely shaved. He invited us to
have lunch with him, a real Buryat meal in which only the apples and mineral water
were familiar tastes. The main dish was pozi, a steamed pastry filled
with onion and meat.

I asked about his hopes for
Buddhism in the USSR in the coming years. “The major challenge is to
overcome the problem of training lamas. The future development of Buddhism here
is linked to this. To re-open temples we need well trained lamas. We hope that
in the future we will have a center for training lamas within the Soviet Union.
There are many young people who wish to be lamas. It used to be dozens had this
wish. Now there are many more who think in this direction. We receive letters
about this not only from Buryats and Kalmyks but also Russians. One day you
will come here and meet a Russian lama!

“We have to re-open
temples and datsans that were closed. There is presently only one other, the
Aginkski Datsan in the Chita region. Also in the Chita region we are re-opening
the Tsugolsky datsan. A temple has now been registered in Elista city in the
Kalmyck region. We have two lamas there now but it is not yet functioning. We
no longer face official opposition to reviving temples and datsans but the
buildings themselves are often very deteriorated and in every case major
restoration work is required. This is not easy to do and also it requires a lot
of money. We also need many books and in several languages, Buryat, Tibetan,
Classical Mongolian and Russian. Our brothers in India [mainly Tibetan refugees
gathered around the Dalai Lama] are helping us with literature in the Tibetan
language.”

Do you have close ties with
the Tibetan Buddhists in India? “Yes. One of our lamas is now in India
participating in a special series of ceremonies at which the Dalai Lama is
describing the steps to holiness. The last such ceremony was held in 1913 in
Ulan Bator.”

Do you hope to teach the
Tibetan language in the Buryat Republic? “Only to those training to become
lamas. The books they must study are in Tibetan. But we see among young people
here a fresh interest in learning Classical Mongolian and we hope it will be
possible for them to study it. The Buryat language is a dialect of Classical
Mongolian. They are sister languages, like Ukrainian and Russian.”

After the meal I was able
to sit with the abbot on his couch. “Originally I was a lama at the Chita
datsan,” he told me. “I went there when I was ten and have been a
monk ever since, though I was not able to live in a datsan from 1937 to 1945. I
was fortunate in that period not to be a prisoner like so many others. I found
a job in a factory. Now I am 82. I am happy to have lived long enough to see
Gorbachev and to witness these new events.”

Outside we stopped near a
large prayer wheel being turned by a newly married couple. The prayer wheel
reminded me of the candles Orthodox believers light before icons — a similar
integration of deed and symbol, tangible and intangible, unspoken prayer and
physical action. “The Buddha taught the way for us to pass from suffering
to nirvana,” explained the abbot’s secretary, Victor Mitypov, an
English-speaking layman. “There are several ways but all involve movement
and this movement is symbolized by the eight-spoked wheel. At the center of the
wheel is dharmakaya — the Buddha teaching. The spokes represent the
eight-fold path: right seeing, right thinking, right speech, right action,
right living, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. The
wheel’s outer circumference shows that all these different forms are unified.
In spinning the wheel, no one rod can be seen. We see only their oneness.”

We encountered a Russian
couple who had come to the datsan from Moscow. The man knew Lama Syvan and
Victor Mitypov from an earlier visit. “I am Buddhist,” he said.
“My friend is Christian but she wants to know more about Buddhism.” I
asked if there was a Buddhist Temple in Moscow. “Not yet.”

Before leaving Ulan Ude I
met with Professor Regby Pubayev, a historian teaching in Ulan Ude, who
described how Buddhism found its way to the Buryat people.

“The decisive event
was a visit in 1725 by a group of 150 Tibetan lamas. By the end of the century
there were many datsans in this region and Buryat lamas were travelling back
and forth to Tibet. It was mainly religious contact — there was little trade.
Buryat lamas were deeply respected in Tibet. At the end of the last century, at
the height of relations between Buryat and Tibet, a Buryat was teacher to the
Dalai Lama. In this same period Buryat lamas tried to strengthen the
relationship between Tibet and Russia. A Buryat delegation went to the court of
Czar Nicholas II. On the whole their mission was not successful — in 1907 the
British-Russian Treaty was signed that resulted in Russia abandoning relations
with Tibet — but their effort had one positive result, the construction of a
Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg in 1915.[50] One can say that there was a better understanding of Buddhism in
Russia.”

I asked about the doctrinal
content of Buddhism. “At the heart of Buddhism is compassion. It is the
red thread running through all the teaching. There is a list of Ten Virtues.
Most of them have their basis in compassion — not to kill, not to steal, not
to cherish an intention that could cause another harm, not to harm one’s body
with destructive substances, not to violate laws that protect the marital
state. The Dalai Lama, heads of this branch of Buddhism, is regarded as the
reincarnation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara who especially embodies
compassion. It is because of compassion for those who suffer that a bodhisattva
does not enter nirvana but chooses to help. The lama is primarily
there to help the people. He is compared to a man guiding a ferry boat,
carrying passengers from one side of the river to the other. People come to the
lama with their problems, their worries, and the lama gives advice and prays.
Believers show the highest respect toward lamas.”

A Buddhist in Moscow

Eremey Parnov, President of
the Science Fiction National Section of the Soviet Writers Union and Vice
President of the International Science Fiction Association, is also a Buddhist.

Parnov lives in the
Sokolniki district in the northeast part of central Moscow. On the living room
wall there are leopard and python skins, bow and arrow, and tribal wooden
masks. The library is spread through several rooms and lines the main hallway.
In areas not taken by books there were awards he has received, a photo of Boris
Pasternak, exotic tropical shells, a large starfish, various kinds of coral, a
cup imprinted with the label for Beefeater Gin, and a small Christmas tree
standing in front of a Buddha statue.

We looked at photos of his trip
to Hawaii and Buddhists he had met there. He pointed out a symbol, a circle on
a square background. “This is a Buddhist icon. Within the circle is the
leaf of the Bodhi tree, the tree the Buddha sat under when he achieved
enlightenment. The circle represents the earth. The points where the cross
intersects the circle are the four corners — north, east, south and
west.”

He had a photo of Mother
Theresa clipped from a Soviet magazine. “I was among those at the airport
to meet her during her recent visit to the USSR. She wants to set up a section
of her religious society here in Moscow to take care of victims of the Armenian
earthquake who are brought to Moscow for treatment. She brought four nuns with
her, nurses, who are staying in Moscow.”

He is one of the lucky
Russians who has had the chance to travel widely. “Travel in Asia is a
pleasure to my soul,” he said. “I have now been in all the Buddhist
countries except China. A month ago I was in India. I have met the Dalai Lama
two times, first at his retreat in the Himalayas and again in Mongolia.”

He showed us a copy of his
book on Buddhism, Gods of Lotus, published in Moscow in 1980, handsomely
printed on glossy white paper with many color plates.

I asked what drew him
toward Buddhism. “Perhaps it was fate — that is, perhaps I was
genetically prepared for contemplation and drawn to the engagement of east and
west. As a child I didn’t know anything about the east but I knew fairy tales
of the east like Sinbad the Sailor. It wasn’t the only direction my interest
went. I also liked Jack London and Edgar Allen Poe. Then in 1950, when I was
fifteen, a friend gave me a little bronze Buddha statue. This was an impetus to
find out what it meant and what it was linked with. After being given the
statue I started reading books about eastern culture, sociology, environment,
religion, and history. I found all this fascinating.

“There was an element
of chance. Chance has played a big role in my life. In 1970, by the time I was
a working writer, I went to Japan as part of a delegation from the Soviet
Writers Union. I was Pravda’s Vietnam correspondent in 1972-3. Living
and travelling in Buddhist countries — this was my real university. I happened
to be in certain places and happened to meet certain people, people who had
never talked with ‘specialists.’

“The next stage in my
engagement was the consequence of symbolism opening its doors to me. I was
drawn into the symbolism of the ancient world, from the pre-Buddhist period of
human history, then Indian culture in the pre-Veda period, passing through the
Gnostics to various forms of Christianity. I found that symbolism consists of rites
and sacraments. It is a presentation of the invisible through the material
world. You find that there are certain symbols which occur in every culture.
Not only shapes but numbers have symbolic meaning. Three is a sacred number in
many cultures. One represents the universe and God. Two represents all
opposites — sun and moon, day and night, man and woman. Three, the trinity, is
the triangle, three sides making a form of absolute stability representing the
oneness of past, present and future. This concept of oneness beneath all
appearance of difference is fundamental to Buddhism. The number five has
special associations. There are systems of five. There are five Buddhas of
meditation each with five characteristic colors. There are five natural elements:
earth, metal, fire, water and wood. There are systems built on seven,
especially in the Babylonian culture, with the Jews and in Christianity: seven
days, seven planets, seven colors, seven scents, seven metals, seven jewels,
seven sacraments. We could spend months talking about symbols and the meaning
of certain numbers. It’s a big subject. Personally I have found it
important.”

I asked if his study of
eastern religion and symbols had been of consequence in his writing. “I
didn’t include the oriental in my stories for a long time. Now there is a
synthesis, and it happened ‘without my participation.’ A few years ago — 1983
— I wrote a novel, Shambala, that I think brings Buddhism into science
fiction. Dreams are essential to the story. In dreams we create non-existent
worlds in which the dead are still alive. The line between ourselves and the
dead is erased. In my novel the dream is not in us but rather around
us. The dream is real. Our secret wishes and desires exist independently of us.
The novel asks how would we live in that world in which our dreams are real?
How would we adapt? How could we remain human?

“I named the world
Famagusta after a port in Cyprus, but it has nothing to do with that city. The
hero is John Smith, an American psychiatrist who took part in the Vietnam war.
His wife and daughters have died. He has only his work. Suddenly he finds his
wife and daughters are alive and with him again. It’s impossible. He
understands that this isn’t ‘reality,’ not as a psychiatrist understands reality.
Yet he finds he can live in this other reality, but he has to be on his guard
all the time. It’s very seductive, this other reality.

“The story is partly
about the European longing for knowledge of things. In the story the doctor
tries to reach the center of the Shambala land, this dream world he is living
in.”

Does John Smith find the
center? “No, naturally not. The art of the writer is to convince the
reader that there is something above, something higher, but the writer cannot
take you there. When you watch a horror film, you are frightened only until the
source of the horror is shown on the screen. Then your terror disappears.”

Has horror been a factor in
your religious development? “The history of this country is horrifying.
You cannot consider our history without being presented with the dilemma of
good and evil. It isn’t hard for us to believe in the devil. In fact it often
seemed that only the devil existed, no power of goodness. But you can
learn from suffering that the way taken by many people is not the best way. You
learn that the path to follow is the way of non-participation in evil. This is
fundamental Buddhist teaching — the noble truth that the source of suffering
is desire but that it is possible to live a life not dominated by desire. The
control of desire prevents evil.”

How has Buddhism mattered
in your own life?

“It’s difficult to
say. There has never been a religious revelation. Rather Buddhism has led me
into conscious meditation about life. This reinforces my life. What was sensed
intuitively was proved. It has meant a deeper sense of connection with the
universe. Buddhism has been a way of understanding. But I can’t say anything
extraordinary has happened.”

Does Buddhism have much in
common with other religions? “The majority of teachings exist in each
religion. The differences that exist are around the points of agreement, not at
the center. The differences mainly have to do with what comes of trying to
describe a world beyond our limits, the content of the ‘other world.'”

THE COUNCIL FOR RELIGIOUS
AFFAIRS

Peter the Great saw the
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church as a competitor. “Dazzled by the
shining virtue and splendor of the supreme pastor,” Peter declared,
“the common people imagine that he is another sovereign, equal to the
autocrat in power and even greater than he is.” When Patriarch Adrian died
in 1700, Peter choose no successor, instead appointing an archbishop to serve
under his direction as “Exarch of the Holy Throne of the Patriarch.”
In 1721 Peter officially abolished the Patriarchate, replacing it with a
department called the Holy Synod. Its members were several archbishops selected
by the Czar whose work and decisions were monitored by a Procurator exercising
veto power. In no case was the Procurator to be an ecclesiastic. The first
person Peter appointed to the job was a colonel of the dragoons.

State control ended only
with the abdication of Czar Nicholas II two centuries later. In 1917, at a
Council in Moscow’s Savior Cathedral, the Patriarchate was restored with the
election of Tikhon.

On January 23, 1918, Lenin
signed a decree separating Church and state. In some ways it was a step forward
from the arrangement of the previous 200 years. The decree prohibited any law
or regulation which would “put any restraint upon, or limit freedom of
conscience or establish any advantages or privileges on the ground of the
religion of citizens.” Citizens were free “to confess any religion or
none at all.”

Religious rites could be
performed so long as they did “not disturb the public order or infringe
the rights of the citizens of the Soviet Republic.” In years to come the
very existence of a church, not to say the performance of religious rites,
would be seen as disturbing public order.

As the government was determined
to raise a new generation of children “free of superstition,”
churches were barred from any role in schools, public or private. Religious
instruction was permitted only on a private basis. Some believers saw this
ruling as a blessing in disguise. Religion would no longer be a subject that
one passed or failed before a blackboard.

The most aggressive aspect
of the decree concerned property ownership: “No ecclesiastical or
religious association shall have the right to own property. . . . All property
belonging to churches and religious associations . . . shall become public
property. Buildings and objects intended especially for religious worship shall
be handed over by special decision of local or central authorities, free of
charge, for use by the religious associations concerned.”[51]

It was at this time that
the cathedrals within the Moscow Kremlin were taken away.[52] A few months later, with the adoption of the first Soviet
Constitution, clergy — along with capitalists, criminals and imbeciles — were
deprived of the right to vote.

It was Lenin’s view that
the Church was one of the principle agents of oppression: “Autocracy
cannot do without its twin agents: a hangman and a priest,” he wrote.
“The first suppresses popular resistance by force, the second sweetens the
fate of the oppressed by empty promises of heaven.” The priest was simply
a “policeman in a cassock.” In a letter to Gorky, he wrote,
“Every religious idea, every idea of God, even flirting with the idea of
God causes unutterable vileness of the most degrading kind, a contagion of the
most abominable type.” With such convictions, it is hardly surprising that
Lenin put great stress on the role of the Communist Party to undertake atheist
education, yet for tactical reasons he opposed an all-out frontal attack on
religion, preferring a step-by-step approach.

The initial response of the
Orthodox Church to the October Revolution, which occurred during the Council,
was to declare the Bolsheviks anathema. In an encyclical to the faithful, Patriarch
Tikhon excommunicated all those “open and secret enemies of [Christ’s]
Truth” who engage in “persecutions . . . and in sowing the seeds of
hatred and . . . fratricide.”[53] The letter was not, however, a call to armed resistance.

In 1918, 54 clerics, having
resisted state efforts to confiscate chalices and other objects used at the
altar, were tried for inciting civil strife. Several were executed, among them
the saintly young bishop of Petrograd, Metropolitan Benjamin. Perhaps in
response to the shock many felt at such bloody actions, in 1919 Lenin warned
Party workers to “strive to avoid all offense to the religious feelings of
believers, because such offense may lead to intensifying religious
fanaticism.” The same year he signed a decree exempting conscientious
objectors from military service and in 1920 a law was passed transferring
certain areas of farm land to religious communities.

In 1921, however, a decree
declared sermons were legal only if limited to purely religious subjects. In
1923 two decrees legalized the closure of churches if the buildings were needed
“for other uses” or the religious association was found to be
“politically unreliable and anti-Soviet.”[54]

In the course of the civil
war and for several years afterward, acts of violence were frequently committed
against believers. Between 1917 and 1923, it is estimated that in the Russian
Orthodox Church alone 28 bishops and 1200 priests were killed.[55] These killings mainly occurred during the civil war in situations
where clergy had openly backed the opponents of Soviet power or were assumed to
be supporters of the Whites.

With the end of the civil
war in 1920 and the launching of the New Economic Policy, certain groups of
believers — notably Protestants and “renovationist” Orthodox who supported
the revolution — enjoyed a period of freedom that some still remember as
“a golden age.” They could publish freely, organize meetings, and
start new churches. But the period of toleration was short-lived and even
during these few years believers were under many restraints.

On Easter Sunday, 1925,
with Lenin dead and Stalin on his way to absolute power, the League of the
Militant Godless had its founding congress in Moscow.[56] Three years later Stalin’s first Five Year Plan called for
“the unification of thought of all Soviet citizens.” In 1929 the
oppressive Law of Religious Associations was passed. Churches, seminaries and
Bible schools were closed and many thousands of Bibles and liturgical books
confiscated. The church had indeed been separated from the state, but not been
freed from state control.

The state agency
established for control, the Council for Religious Affairs, is invested with
the power to oversee religious life and to be certain that national policies in
regard to religion were being followed. Over the decades it has grown into a
huge structure. There is the All-Union CRA in Moscow, attached to the Council
of Ministers, whose large staff requires several buildings. There is a CRA in
each Soviet Republic with local offices in major cities.

Councils at the local level
registered churches, approved particular persons being sent to seminary,
decided whether or not an exception to a particular rule might be allowed (an
outdoor rather than indoor funeral or a priest from another church presiding),
permitted repairs and restoration work, saw to it that the local congregation
was “contributing” at an adequate level to the Soviet Peace Fund, and
followed the activities of every local religious association. They were also
responsible for the “political education” of religious leaders and
made regular reports that were funnelled through to Moscow. A myriad of
decisions by religious bodies could only be made with the approval of the CRA.
Often a CRA appointee was designated a member or even chairman of a parish
council. When a given believer was seen as dangerous or ignored orders
restricting religious life, the CRA initiated actions which ranged from fines
to prison terms.

A tentative change in
government policy toward believers could be noted in 1983 with the return to
the Russian Orthodox Church of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow, but it was not
until the Gorbachev period, most notably following the April 1988 meeting with
Orthodox bishops in the Kremlin, that the CRA began, still within many limits,
to espouse believers’ rights.

Moscow: Konstantin Kharchev

In a widely read interview
published in December 1988, Konstantin Kharchev, CRA chairman since January
1985, talked at length about the oppression of believers, advocating many
changes for which dissidents had been struggling for years.[57]

“I think we
must,” he said, “as quickly as possible, free ourselves of the

[anti-religious]

legislation of 1929. . . . This legislation limits in a
Stalinistic and bureaucratic fashion all independent and democratic activity. .
. . Practically every line of that law underlines the dependence of the Church
on the power of the State. All kinds of arbitrary actions are admissible under
such conditions.”

Alexander Nezhny reminded
Kharchev of the killing of bishops that had occurred in the early years of the
Soviet state, mentioning by name Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev, Archbishop
Andronik of Perm, Bishop Germogen of Tobolsk and Metropolitan Benjamin of
Petrograd (now Leningrad). One of the lies often told against the Orthodox
Church to justify acts of violence against bishops and priests, Nezhny pointed
out, was that they were refusing to come to the aid of famine victims in 1921.
“But then how are we to explain,” he asked, “the Church’s
creation of a Pan-Russian Committee of Aid Against Famine?. . . . In fact, they

[the state authorities]

were simply looking for an excuse to let loose an
attack on the Church.” It was a question all the more striking in that it
concerned a period of Soviet history when Lenin was still alive.

Kharchev said that one
“must not lose sight of the fact that [these killings] occurred in a
period of open confrontation” when “leaders of the Church did not
accept the new power and fought against it.” Then he added that a process
was now underway to “to seal for all eternity the memory of those innocent
people who were victims of that war waged against our own people”
including members of the Church.

Changes at the top did not
automatically mean change further down, he admitted. “The fact is that a
battle is raging over many churches [which in the past were confiscated]. The
believers demand that they be returned to them while the local authorities
reply that they intend to make the church into a museum, a café, a concert hall
or a library. . . . Their reasoning is that it would be better to let the
church fall down than to give it back to believers. . . . The Council for
Religious Affairs [in Moscow] will have to ensure the suppression of such
decisions on the part of local authorities.” The principle should be, he
went on, that churches belong to believers. “In general [the authorities]
would be justified in transferring all the Orthodox churches to the
Patriarchate of Moscow which should have complete responsibility for
them.”

More than 500 Orthodox
churches had been registered in 1988, Kharchev said, as contrasted with 16 in
1987, but the number would have been still greater in 1988 had it not been for
certain officials who still blocked the way. He reported that in 1988 the CRA
in Moscow had reversed 83 refusals by local authorities to register religious
societies, actions which occasionally had provoked calls from regional or
republican leaders demanding to know the reason for such reversals. “I
replied,” said Kharchev, “on the basis of law. But some responsible
comrades still have fresh in their memories the time of ‘rule by telephone,’
the times when you could close a church and disband a religious society by one
telephone call.” He expressed his view that in the future legal registration
of churches should no longer be required, thus eliminating the main job of
locals Councils for Religious Affairs.

The problem still facing
the Church, Nezhny said, is that it is still like “a person living
somewhere without a residence permit. This person may live, eat and drink, but
he is never free of the idea that at any moment the police may come and say to
him, ‘You have one day to get out of this place,’ or again, ‘Citizen, you are
liable to a fine.’

Kharchev found the analogy
“a bit invidious.” Did not the bishops’ meeting with Gorbachev in the
Kremlin in April suggest a status higher than that of a vagrant? He went on to
discuss the need for religious groups to have the possibility to carry on
publishing work, not only to issue Bibles and theological books but “why
not a revue which will handle seriously political and social problems as well
as religious philosophy?” The state, he said, should provide paper for
religious publications but “it is indispensable that the Church should
have its own printing press.”

Asked about the situation
of the draft law on Freedom of Conscience, Kharchev replied that, following
instructions received from the Central Committee, “the Council for
Religious Affairs, the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of Justice, and the
Judiciary of the Supreme Soviet . . . have all taken part in the elaboration of
the project.”[58] In addition, he said, “consultations have taken place with
the representatives of religious organizations covering practically all
confessions.” With so many proposals put forward, the process “has
taken rather a long time, giving rise to questions and perplexity in our
country as well as abroad.”[59]

Kiev: Nicholai Kolesnik

The Chairman of the
Ukrainian Council for Religious Affairs, Nicholai Kolesnik, is a thin, cautious
man in a grey suit. We met at his office in Kiev early in January 1989.[60] “Western nations have only slight information about the
situation of believers in the Ukraine,” he complained, “and what is
said is often misinformation. But we are people interested in building up
understanding.”

I asked how he got his job.
“I started in 1978. The opportunity came from the Party apparatus, quite
by chance, really. I had studied at the Academy of Social Sciences. My
dissertation was on the subject of the application of Lenin’s principles to
church-state relations. I didn’t expect to have such a major responsibility but
I am pleased with the job. These activities are important in the country’s
life.”

What is the Council’s work?
“We are required to see that the law in regard to church activities is
observed. It is a big job. The Ukrainian territory has a population of more
than 50 million people, 15 religious denominations, and over 6500 active
religious communities. Most are Russian Orthodox, 4100 parishes — more than
half of all the Orthodox parishes in the USSR; altogether there are about 7000
in the Soviet Union. The second largest religious group in the Ukraine is the
Evangelical Christian Baptists — they have 1100 congregations. Then come the
Roman Catholics, Calvinists, Old Believers, Seventh Day Adventists,
Pentecostals, Methodists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. To serve the needs of the
Jewish population there are fourteen synagogues. We also have some Moslems but
as yet no mosque, though there is now an application to open one.”

Recently, he said, the
Council for Religious Affairs has helped to improve relations with Jews in the
United States. “There was the problem here of cemeteries in areas where
Jews used to live but where there was no longer anyone to take care of the
graves, including some tombs of famous people. A Committee on Preservation of
the Values of the Jewish Culture in the Territory of the Soviet Union has been
set up in the United States to provide support for maintenance of the graves
and also arrange for Jews to visit the Soviet Union. It was started by Albert
Reichman, head of the Olympia and York Company, and Noach Deer, a member of the
City Council of New York and chairman of the Committee on Human Rights. A
coordination committee has been organized in the USSR with Konstantin Kharchev
the co-chairman for the Soviet side. This is a positive step in work to
overcome one area of friction.”

I asked about developments
involving Christians. “The major event was the Millennium celebration last
year. The first parts were in Moscow and Kiev but it continued in various
cities and towns until the end of the year. This event inspired faithful
people. There have been many new appeals to open or re-open parish churches.
Just in the Ukrainian territory 450 churches were opened or re-opened in 1988.
Most were Orthodox but there were fourteen Catholic parishes [Latin-rite
Catholics, not the Ukrainian Catholic Church which uses the eastern rite] and
fourteen Protestant. There has also been a surge of religious publishing. There
has just been a new edition of 110,000 copies of the Bible in the Ukrainian
language plus a large printing of the New Testament.” He took examples of
both out of his office safe — an unusual location for Bibles — and gave them
to me. “There has also been a Manual for Preachers. These are examples, I think,
of the positive way things are going.”

What about the tension
between Orthodox and Eastern-rite Catholics? “It isn’t an area in which
the Council can have influence. It is between the Churches. The strategy of the
Moscow Patriarchate has been to open its doors to the Vatican, but with one
pre-condition, the principle of parity. The Vatican has considered itself the
‘senior mother’ in the Church though I think it is fair to say that there is
more religious life in modern Moscow than in Rome! The Orthodox insist on equal
footing.”[61]

What about the role of
believers in social service? “Immediately after the earthquake in Armenia,
churches in the Ukraine had a special collection. Believers gave 850,000
rubles. Within the Ukraine believers are socially active in many ways. For
example here in Kiev the Baptists are helping an orphanage. First they bought
carpets. They want to make the orphanage a better one. There are eighty
faithful people, all pensioners, helping in one of the city hospitals doing all
kinds of domestic tasks from carpentry to assisting the nurses. The hospital
manager is very pleased.”[62]

Despite a civil
conversation, I felt the chill of traditional Soviet bureaucracy. I wouldn’t
want to be a local petitioner facing Nicholai Kolesnik.

Archangel: Mikhail
Ksenofontov

Mikhail Feodorovich
Ksenofontov, head of the Council for Religious Affairs in the Archangel Oblast,
got the job because of Gorbachev. “I have been 32 years in this region but
only the last two working on religious issues,” he said. “There has
been a big turnover in personnel. The former functionaries in the Council for
Religious Affairs were linked with persecution of the church and believers. It
would be incredible to expect them to change their views and strategy. Another
person was needed. The Regional Council of Deputies gave me the job of moving
things in a new direction in conformity with the government’s decision to
undertake actions beneficial to the believing people, to respect them and seek
a real dialogue. Our first task was to grant them rights that had been denied
them before. The problem was never the clergy or the faithful people — it was
the policy.”

Mikhail Feodorovich is a
short, grandfatherly man nearing retirement. Despite his many years of
responsibility in the Communist Party, he impressed me as unbureaucratic. By
the time I left Archangel I was certain he was well liked and trusted by local
believers. I sensed in him not only a genuine warmth to religion and began to
think he might be a believer himself. Not only he but his wife, wearing a scarf
like any devout older woman, came with me to the Easter Liturgy. During our
several days together, I noticed that whenever he met believers, he greeted
them with the words, “Christ is risen!”

We visited a church across
the Dvina River in the village of Zaostrovje. While the lower church was in
good repair, the upper church and its icons were in an advanced state of decay.

“The icons are like
our villages,” said Mikhail Feodorovich, “hardly surviving.
Everywhere villages are being destroyed by neglect and urbanization. My wife
and I have a house here. Last year we grew a ton of cabbage! We sold 100 kilos
to the collective. We feel at home here but such villages are dying. Their only
hope is a change in policy. At least here there is a church. Not many villages
are so fortunate.”

Knowing that in the old
days many Old Believers had fled to the far north, taking distance from the
czar, I had hoped to meet them in Archangel, but Mikhail Feodorovich’s efforts
to set up an interview hadn’t worked out.

“There is one Old
Believer woman I talked to but she refused to see you. If she did this, she
said, people would curse her. Traditionally those dissidents who came here
sought an isolated life in settlements with people who shared their convictions.
Old Believers are not so talkative.”

Personally, he was most at
home with the Orthodox. “The smaller the Church, the busier it is seeking
converts, especially Adventists and Baptists. Sometimes they speak in buses.
When I am forced to listen to a speech or sermon, I don’t like it.”

Was he convinced that the
change underway would be durable? “It will come if we are patient. We are
slow people in the north. We don’t mind to wait in line so much. This isn’t a
bad quality. Patience is a virtue.”

Baku: Rafig Abdullaev

While in Baku in May, I
went to the Government House for a meeting with Rafig Abdullaev, head of the
Council for Religious Affairs in Azerbaijan, and his assistant, Alexander
Alexandrovich Kozlov. Like many working in senior positions in the Council,
Abdullaev used to work for Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Kozlov, a younger man
responsible for contact with Christian groups, had been a teacher working with
physically handicapped children in Tashkent before starting his work with the Council
in 1985.

I asked Abdullaev if the
Council for Religious Affairs was still needed. “In my own view, yes. It
is not only in the USSR that religious organizations are registered. This is a
common practice both in east and west. It is not unusual for states to have
Ministers responsible for religious bodies — their land, property, et cetera.
In Russia, before the revolution, there was the office of the Procurator of the
Holy Synod. It was started by Peter the Great. In the Holy Synod, the
Procurator’s word was law. The Council for Religious Affairs does not have the
right to interfere with the internal life of religious bodies. Our law is that
the religious bodies are independent of the state. They should not interfere
with the state nor the state with them. This is the basic principle. The role
of the Council for Religious Affairs is to provide a point of contact between
the state and believers. On the one hand we defend the rights and needs of
believers before state bodies and assist believers when they have needs. On the
other hand we are responsible to see that the interests of the state are
defended among believers.”

If this is the present
situation, why is a new religious law needed? “A lot has been written
about failures of the 1929 law. A new law on freedom of conscience has been
drafted. We have read it and made an assessment. An ideological committee
attached to the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
the USSR has considered it. The draft will be published in the mass media so
that the public can participate in the discussion about it. About ten days ago
it was discussed in the Politburo. I gather it will be published soon. I expect
the new law to be adopted in the near future.”

How has the work of the
Council for Religious Affairs changed in the last two years? “Remarkably.
We have been restructuring our practices, operating in many respects under what
we assume will be the content of the forthcoming law. Formerly we had only
sixteen mosques in the republic, six of them in Baku. Now the number of mosques
has more than doubled — there are eighteen more. One of them is a very
beautiful mosque that had been restored by the Ministry of Culture for use as a
museum but believers requested it and now it is a working mosque. Many old
mosques are being restored and some will be returned to religious use. There
are also more Christian churches. There are three synagogues. Altogether there
are now four Russian Orthodox churches, one church for Old Believers, two
Armenian Orthodox churches, twelve Molokan churches [Milk Drinkers, a Christian
sect that grew out of the Dukhobors], six Baptist churches and four Adventist
churches. The principal is that wherever people want to have a place of
worship, it is their right and we must help them. We have many requests to open
more religious centers.”[63]

Aren’t these far to few
mosques for such a huge Moslem population? “One stumbling block is the
shortage of clergy. It was only in 1968 that Moslems were permitted to send
students to the [Sunnite] Moslem theological institutes in central Asia, and
then only two persons at a time. Sometimes not even two were sent. There was no
such institute in Azerbaijan. Now a [Shi’ite] madrassah is under
construction here in Baku. It will open with fifteen students this September.
By 1994 there should be seventy-five students in the five-year-program. When
there are more imams, there will be more mosques. The Christians didn’t face
such a serious obstacle — Russian, Armenian and Georgian seminaries were able
to provide for the needs of their believers here. But in the former
administrative system, the Moslems were somehow oppressed.”

Why? “It is something
like the problem faced by Catholics and Buddhists. In general everything
connected with religion was disapproved but this was even more the case for
certain religions. Islam was regarded as a dangerous religion. Now that view
has changed and the old strategy has been abandoned. We have come to realize
that believers are also Soviet citizens working for the development of society.
They are even more active in supporting perestroika than
non-believers.”

What are your hopes for the
future? “It will take a long time to repair the damage done in the past.
In the thirties various mosques and cathedrals were destroyed, places of
worship that were also national monuments. Many religious people were purged

[the word often used in the USSR for those who were killed or sent to labor
camps]

. It was illegal but it happened. We must investigate what happened. Also
we need to do all we can to make it possible for believers to participate in
charitable work. This also was formerly prohibited. We hope that believers can
act as supervisors for orphanages and old-age homes.”

Are there those who oppose
the change in policy in regard to believers? “Some can only think of
believers as fanatics. They have heard about holy wars, torture of heretics,
killing of dissidents, people beating themselves with chains — things of this
kind. They think this is typical of religion. But our point of view is that
particular excesses, if they occur, can be dealt with by law.”

What about religious
education? “Our view is that it should be done privately. To do it in the
schools would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. But it
can be done on a voluntary basis at mosques, churches and synagogues. Parish
schools will be a possibility under the new law.”

What about atheistic
indoctrination? Will this remain a standard feature of public education?
“Atheist education is also being restructured with the idea to focus on
materialism and not to abuse the feelings of believers.”

Moscow: Yuri Smirnoff

Back in Moscow from Baku, I
had hoped to interview Konstantin Kharchev but he had been ill and remained in
the hospital.[64] In Kharchev’s absence I met Yuri Petrovich Smirnoff, Director of
the Council’s International Information Department. A doctor of economics, he
had served in diplomatic posts in Thailand, Austria and the German Democratic
Republic before joining the CRA staff ten years ago.

“A lot has changed in
the past year,” he commented. “The big event that opened the gate was
the meeting in the Kremlin April 1988 when Gorbachev received Patriarch Pimen
and several metropolitans. Until then we talked and talked but nothing
happened. After that things started to happen. Perestroika began to
reach the churches. Now there is news about some new event supportive of
religious life practically every day.”

Does the change face much
resistance? “Of course there are people against it — some professional
atheists. There are fights concerning every area of perestroika. You can
see it on television and in the press or in debates on the street. But in the
meantime religious development is going on continuously. One big event was the
launching yesterday of the Orthodox newspaper. It is the first real newspaper
in church hands since the Revolution.”

What effect has perestroika
had for the Council? “The Council’s direction has changed. We still
have the old 1929 law but practically we don’t apply it. All the regulations
and instructions the Council had sent out between 1961 and 1983 have been
officially invalidated.[65] Charity work is allowed. Churches are free to publish. There are
still some difficulties on paper but in practice these are ignored. Formerly it
was very difficult to register a local church — local authorities didn’t want
to do it and all sorts of obstacles were put in the way.”

Why? “They were
embarrassed. One event that helped to change attitudes was the editorial in the
April 1988 Communist [official journal of the Communist Party], which
said that the registration of a church should not be considered a defeat on the
ideological front. But there are still problems. Even the Central Committee
hasn’t yet fully succeeded in reorienting Party members. It can be much worse
in some regions. You may have heard about the case in Ivanovo where local
believers have gone on a hunger strike because they weren’t able to get back
their church.”[66]

What about the problem of
the Ukrainian Catholic Church? “We are going to solve it. Millions of
Soviet citizens are involved. We have to respect them. One problem is that the
Uniates are practically under the Vatican — no state likes having its citizens
obedient to someone outside the country. Also leaders of the Russian Orthodox
Church resist change. In the western Ukraine, my judgment is that the majority
are Uniates. It will be hard for the Orthodox Church to let go of so many local
churches. Probably the Orthodox recall what happened in Czechoslovakia in the
Dubcek time. Changes were made on behalf of the Catholic Church but the
situation didn’t become better for the Orthodox. Catholics became even more
aggressive in their efforts to obtain churches and monasteries from the Russian
Orthodox Church. But for us [in the CRA] there is no reason to reject any group
of twenty believers who want to register as a local church. It is their right.
You cannot prohibit it. You see what is happening in Lithuania.”

Why are glasnost and
perestroika so much more successful in regard to religious matters than
other areas of life? “It doesn’t cost much. You can easily give back a
church. You can say yes. It is easily done. Other problems are much harder to
solve, more complex, and more costly. “

Are you encouraged with the
changes taking place so far? “Now we await the new law of freedom of
conscience. Whatever will be achieved with this, a lot has changed just in the
past year. You can also see the direction things are moving. You see it in the
press, you see it on television, you see it wherever people meet. There is now
a ten-minute sermon every week on All-Union Radio. We never had that before.
And you can see it in Bibles. It used to be that it was a big trouble for a
tourist just to try bringing a single copy through customs. In the coming
months we will pass the 2,000,000 mark for imported Bibles.[67] [He showed me a two-page letter from Britain’s United Bible
Societies listing recent shipments of Bibles.] Compare that with the 350,000
Bibles printed in this country since the October Revolution of 1917. Of course
we still have a long way to go but we are on the way.”

FREE AT LAST?

As these final pages are
being revised in March 1990, the long-awaited new religious legislation is
still pending in the USSR.

Two draft versions of the
legislation give indications both of what to expect and also reveal points of
unresolved tension. One draft appeared in the February 1989 issue of Sovetskoye
Gosudarstvo i Pravo (Soviet State and Law). The author, Yuri Rozenbaum, was
a jurist involved in the field of religious legislation since Khrushchev’s
time. The same month a different draft, unpublished, was distributed for
comment to Soviet religious leaders by the Council for Religious Affairs.

Both texts restore to
religious organizations a “judicial personality” and thus the right
to own property, enter into contracts and to participate in judicial
proceedings. All this was taken away in Lenin’s day in the 1918 decree on the
separation of church and state.

Both draft texts support
the right to profess any or no religion and to “propagate religious or
atheist views” (in the Rozenbaum version, “to carry out religious or
atheist education”). The CRA version notes that the basis of the new law
is Article 52 of the Soviet Union’s Constitution, as revised in 1977, which
guarantees the right of citizens to perform “religious rites or carry out
atheist education.” Rozenbaum finds Article 52 inadequate because it
implies believers do not have the same right to public communication of their
convictions enjoyed by atheists. The Constitutions of 1918 and 1925, permitting
“freedom of religious and anti-religious propaganda,” are preferred
by Rozenbaum.

While the 1929 law limited
religious education to the home, both versions of the new law open the way to
organize Sunday schools, adult study groups and catechism classes in homes, at
churches or at other facilities. The CRA version speaks of the parental right
“to ensure the religious and moral education and teaching of their
children in accordance with their own convictions.” It also affirms the
right of citizens “to teach or study religion, privately as individuals or
with others, at home or at the religious society.”

The CRA text permits
performance of rites and ceremonies at home, banned under the old law, and
suggests they can also be performed in hospitals, prisons and old age homes — if
the administration is willing, quite a big if.

On the topic of charity
work by religious organizations, formerly prohibited, the CRA version states
that churches would have the right to set up charitable societies and that
money used for charitable purposes would not be taxed.

Both versions assume that
religious organizations will continue to be registered. In the CRA text, ten
(it used to be twenty) adult citizens can apply to register a religious
organization and the local Soviet is obliged to respond within one month (formerly
no time limit was set). In the Rozenbaum version it is not the association that
is registered but rather their ustav (statute).

In the CRA version the
final court of appeal for registration would be the CRA — profoundly
problematic in the event that the old style bureaucrats one day recover their
thrones. In the Rozenbaum version believers would be able to go to court.

Both versions bar
discrimination on religious grounds.

The CRA version states that
while religious convictions cannot be used as a means of avoiding civil
obligations, “exceptions to this can be made in terms of exchanging one
civic responsibility for another, with each case to be decided in court.”
In other words, there will be the possibility for those refusing military service
to do alternative service, but the matter is referred to a judge.[68]

Whether there would still
be local and regional Councils for Religious Affairs, or even a national CRA,
and what form these would take, remains vague. The CRA text refers to “the
state organ for religious affairs.” Rozenbaum would leave the monitoring
of religious rights to local soviets and legal organs. He proposes that a new
State Committee for Religious Affairs be set up attached to the Presidium of
the Supreme Soviet.

The CRA version stresses
the need to bring the application of “Leninist principles into line with
the contemporary stage of development of Soviet society.” The Rozenbaum
text spells out in greater detail the right to atheist convictions and
education.

While neither version
specifically recognizes the right of religious organizations to publish
literature, the text of a new publishing law, issued in draft form early in
1989, permitted publishing not only by official organizations but also by
cooperatives, artists’ unions, other groups and ordinary citizens, so long as
the material being published does not violate the law.

Both versions, comments
John Anderson of Keston College, “go some way in meeting the criticisms of
existing legislation made by believers . . . [In] a climate where everything
that is not expressly forbidden is permitted, the new law seems likely to be a
significant improvement over its predecessor, especially as the last article of
the CRA draft states that should the USSR accede to an international treaty
whose provisions differ from the law of Freedom of Conscience, then the treaty
shall be applied.”

Responses were submitted to
the CRA by religious associations. They refer only to the content of the CRA
draft:

* The Russian Orthodox
Church proposed removal of the reference to “Leninist principles.” It
called for direct participation of religious organizations in shaping any
government decisions affecting the churches. Responding to the draft text’s ban
of religious education in school, the Church proposed prohibition of compulsory
atheist education as well. It asked for specific recognition of the right of
churches to set up educational, charitable, youth and other associations and
stressed the right of minors to participate in religious communities. It
advocated that churches should have the right to appeal in court if a matter
cannot be resolved with the CRA. In the event a local church closes, it was
proposed that the property be retained by the larger church organization and
not revert to the state. It also proposed that money given to the church for
restoration be exempt from taxation.

* Seventh Day Adventists
stressed “the right of religious organizations to engage in charitable
activities, that is, to perform the service of charity at state-run
institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, prisons and so on.”

* The All Union Council of
Evangelical Christian Baptists asked that religious organizations “be
given the preferential right to use previously confiscated religious
buildings.”

* The Moslem Board for the
European Part of the USSR and Siberia advocated “pensions on a uniform
basis” for those employed by religious organizations.

* The Catholic Bishops of
Lithuania, noting that trade unions often refuse to register labor contracts of
persons working for the church — organists, bell-ringers and others — called
for legal protection of the “right to social security of those in church
employment.”

* An Armenian bishop
suggested that the law forbid the fomenting of ethnic hostility.

An independent response was
submitted by a group of Orthodox believers, including Alexander Ogorodnikov,
Vladimir Osipov and a monk of the Danilov Monastery in Moscow. They advocated
the total separation of both religion and atheism from the state and called for
the return of all confiscated buildings and property. They proposed that rather
than prohibit both atheist and religious education in school, both be available
in schools on a voluntary basis. They went further than the CRA in calling for
the new law to recognize the right of individuals to abstain from certain civic
duties on the grounds of conscience. They proposed an article on the right of
both religious and atheist organizations to have access to the media and to
have their own media resources. The new law, they said, should prohibit
punitive taxation of clergy and religious workers.[69] Neither should churches be pressured to make donations to the
Soviet Peace Fund or other funds. Officials found guilty of infringing the law
should be removed from their posts. Finally they suggested that representation
of religious groups in state bodies should be on a proportional basis. If the
principle were accepted, it would be a drastic change.

The proposal that churches
should be returned was taken up in an appeal organized by the Public Commission
for Giving Help to Christians, signed by thousands of Soviet citizens and
submitted to the Congress of Peoples Deputies in August 1989. The appeal noted
that, while the repression of believers and closure of churches is now in the
past, “local authorities are not hurrying to return churches to believers
despite many requests. . . . In many corners of the country thousands of people
are stifling in overcrowded churches. . . . At the same time, huge cathedrals
made into atheist and other museums are practically empty, their lonely
attendants bored to death, receiving a tiny stipend for their enforced
idleness.” These churches “were taken away illegally and without
compensation. For many years the state has made use, in whatever ways it
wished, of church buildings, icons, religious utensils and also the unpaid
labor of millions of repressed [imprisoned] believers.” Among the signers
were Father Dimirti Dudko and Father Gleb Yakunin, former prisoners.

While in Moscow in May
1989, I asked Yuri Smirnoff, Director of the CRA’s International Information
Department, to summarize the central elements of the new law.

“Religious bodies will
have the status of juridical persons,” he said. “The law will
recognize the right to participate in charitable work. It will confirm the
right to publish journals and periodicals. We hope it will provide equal
taxation for all citizens, which would have positive consequences for clergy.
It will assure the right to teach religion privately in whatever way religious
bodies arrange. It will provide alternative service for conscientious
objectors.”

I asked why passage of such
a law was taking so long. “The process has taken longer than any of us in
the Council expected. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said by the
end of 1988. Six months ago we thought the law would be ready by the end of
January 1989 but then parts had to be revised as it didn’t fully meet the terms
of the Vienna Conference.[70] In March there was a meeting with religious representatives to
get more responses from them and this meant more revisions. I expect the draft
text will soon be published in the press so that there can be public debate
about it. Work on the legislation is still going forward. There has just been
the tenth meeting on the draft legislation by the commission set up in the Supreme
Soviet. I don’t know when the law itself will be passed — this summer, I hope,
but in any event this year.”

On September 19, addressing
the Central Committee Plenum, Mikhail Gorbachev mentioned the new law in
connection with the nationalities question: “The position and role of the
church in relations between nationalities is something that affects the
question we are discussing today. It is well known that in the past hostility
and conflict between different nationalities were in part a consequence of religious
intolerance. This factor also makes itself felt today. We appreciate the
peacemaking position of the Russian Orthodox Church, Islamic and other
religions groups, and we hope that they will use their influence and
opportunities to help avert and overcome inter-ethnic conflicts. The churches
today are being given the opportunity to pursue their activities in normal
social conditions fully in keeping with their constitutional principles. This
can be seen most strikingly in the fact that some of their most prominent
representatives have been elected to the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies. A law
on freedom of conscience, now being drafted, should regulate the whole range of
problems connected with the position and activities of church organizations in
today’s conditions.”

Assuming that in the near
future the new law will finally be passed and that it will be essentially as
has been described, there are major problems still to be solved that, at least
in the draft versions of the law, were not resolved.

First, there is the matter
of the return of thousands of churches, synagogues, mosques, seminaries,
monasteries and other buildings as well as many items the buildings contained
— icons, ritual articles, relics of saints, and vestments that are either on exhibition
in museums or, more frequently, in storage.

There is the question of
government responsibility for restoration of buildings that were confiscated.
Some were destroyed. Others are either empty and rotting or have been turned
into storehouses, museums, offices, clubs and libraries. None is in the
condition it was when last used for worship.

There is the point of
unambiguous withdrawal. Even in recent instances of property being returned,
for example the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev, adjacent buildings have been
retained. In Leningrad, all the buildings within the walls of the former
Alexander Nevsky Monastery except the Cathedral are used either for museums or
offices. No monastic community has yet been able to reestablish itself on the
monastery grounds.

The problem of buildings
that are in ruin is another issue. Is the government obliged to provide
financial support for restoration and reconstruction? Or must believers pay for
repair of what was stolen, vandalized or destroyed?

In addition to the return
of buildings, there is the matter of returning people. While the great majority
of prisoners of conscience have been released, in February 1990 Keston College
listed thirty-two persons serving camp or compulsory labor sentences due to the
consequences of religious conviction. The majority were conscientious
objectors. There were another thirty-five unconfirmed cases.[71]

The right for religious
associations to establish libraries has yet to be recognized. The only books
officially permitted on premises designated for religious use are books
required for “ritual purposes.”

There is an urgent need for
religious education. In addition to allowing churches to erect community
centers in which religious education can occur, there should be the possibility
for voluntary study groups meeting in schools or other public buildings during
hours when space is available.

Will there still be an
institution similar to the Council for Religious Affairs? Konstantin Kharchev
said in his Ogonyok interview in December 1988 that he considered
government registration of religions associations, once a central task of the
CRA, as “pernicious,” but he did not advocate the CRA’s abolition.
Rather he saw it as “taking another shape,” becoming instead a Commission
of the Supreme Soviet rather than a body under the direction of the Council of
Ministers. There would be identical commissions within the various Soviet
republics, each under the authority of the local legislative body. “The
Council would thereby be transformed into a democratic instrument of the
people,” Kharchev said, “whose decisions, in a state ruled by law,
would be obligatory for all.”

While putting the CRA in a
zone of democratic control would be a significant improvement over the old
structure, the question arises: Why must there a anything like the CRA? Many
states get along quite well without any equivalent body. In a state struggling
to reduce bureaucracy, the CRA would be a prime candidate for complete
evaporation. The only valid intermediate function would be to help undo the
harm it did in earlier years: to facilitate the return of churches and other
confiscated property and to provide assistance in restoration and construction
work.

Another question still
unresolved is the future place of atheism in Soviet life. What will become of
what was the state religion? A number of “chairs” in atheism exist in
Soviet universities. Are these to be maintained? Will students still be
“expected,” even if not required, to take atheist classes? So far
only one atheist museum, the one in Vilnius, has been eliminated and the church
in which it was housed returned to believers, but others remain, the most
famous being the atheist museum in the former Kazan Cathedral in Leningrad.
These are run at state expense and always lodged in places of worship to which
the government has no legitimate claim.

The issues still
outstanding, however, concern not only the state’s duty to believers but the
responsibility of believers to each other.

There is an urgent need for
a more profound ecumenical movement within the Soviet Union. Despite the
ecumenical content of many religious publications, especially those issued by
the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, little has been done
within the various religious communities to overcome religious prejudice.
Catholic-Orthodox hostility remains sharp and dangerous. Protestants still
remember vividly what it was like for them when only the Russian Orthodox
Church was legal. One still finds little understanding of Orthodoxy and Catholicism
among Protestants while Orthodox and Catholic believers still tend to regard
Protestants with condescension. Anti-Moslem views are as widespread in
non-Moslem regions of the USSR as they are in general in the west. Few know
anything about Buddhism.

The most extreme form of
prejudice has been anti-Semitism. While there have been no pogroms in many
years, the bigotry and hatred that gave rise to pogroms remain. Though not
officially sanctioned, anti-Semitism is widespread among Soviet Christians.
Will the Churches work actively to overcome this heritage of contempt, as many
Churches in other countries have done, or will they continue to say that this
is not their task?

An urgent question
confronting the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church is its future
relationship with the Ukrainian Catholic Church. While the right of the
Ukrainian Catholic Church to exist is at last being recognized by the state,
many of its churches are in the hands of the Orthodox Church. Will the Russian
Orthodox hierarchy return places of worship that were formerly Ukrainian
Catholic, at least if the majority of the congregation requests the transfer?
Will leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church express penitence for the ways in
which the Orthodox Church allowed itself to be used in Stalin’s time to
suppress Ukrainian Catholicism? And will Ukrainian Catholic bishops be ready to
offer their forgiveness if it is sought, or will they continue to carry on a
verbal war against Russian Orthodoxy? As the great Orthodox ecumenist, Nicolas
Zernov, noted shortly before his death, “Christians have on the whole
regarded themselves as exempt from the necessity to love those who deviate so
far from their tradition that they seem to blaspheme against God.”[72]

Repentance is a question
confronting many religious leaders. Bishops as a general category are not
renowned as penitents. While bishops may occasionally take public
responsibility for personal sins, it is rare for them to recognize guilt for
sins committed on the collective level or in their official capacity. Can they
repent of compromises they deemed essential to protect the community of
believers from utter destruction? The health of a religious community depends
on each believer, not least those with great responsibilities, examining his conscience
and repenting.

Connected with this is a
willingness, even readiness, to forgive those in society who sought the
destruction of religion and who caused believers to suffer. Is such forgiveness
possible after such irreparable harm has occurred? Remembering those women in
Moscow who broke through police lines to bring bread to German prisoners of
war, I dare to imagine that it is possible. After all, what is happening in the
Soviet Union has much to do with the countless prayers that believers have said
in their hearts for the conversion of those persecuting them, prayers that were
like those scraps of bread offered to the very soldiers who had killed husbands
and sons. Whatever their creed, millions of people living within the borders of
the USSR have in common a deep attention to the spiritual, and every tradition
of spiritual life insists that each of us is called to be a channel of the
mercy of God.

?

Are Soviet believers free
at last?

Not yet. But events have
happened in recent years which even five years ago no one dared to imagine.
Whatever becomes of Gorbachev and his campaign for perestroika, he has
freed immense spiritual energy that has touched everyone.

I recall a television
broadcast about the national Cultural Fund meeting in Moscow that I happened to
see while in Kiev in January. It was beautifully edited: church choir music
alternated with extracts from speeches; during the speeches the camera often
explored icons and churches.

“We need to hear the
voices of past generations, their pain, their conscience, their love,”
said Metropolitan Pitirim. “All countries glorify the memory of those who
brought them faith. May we glorify Saint Vladimir, Prince of Kiev and Equal of
the Apostles.”

The camera focused on an
icon of Saint Vladimir as Metropolitan Pitirim described the process of
evangelization that rapidly spread from Kiev in the Tenth and Eleventh
Centuries.

Vladimir Rasputin, the
Siberian writer and environmental campaigner, spoke passionately of the
influence of religious faith on Russian culture. “We have the richest
literature in the world,” he said, “a literature deeply imbued with
Christianity. This reached its highest point in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers
Karamazov, which gives the impression of not just being written by a human hand
but by an angel. His novels highlight the tragedy of the modern age — that we
grew tired of fighting evil and failed to cherish truth, ignoring the
commandments of God and doing violence to our brother. We should revive our
ideals, not only earthly but heavenly. Then we shall find the understanding and
reconciliation that we all need.”

“It is wrong to
believe that we were born in October 1917,” said another speaker. “We
were born from our ancestors long ago and shaped by their faith, but hostile
actions have destroyed much of our national culture. Repeated blood-lettings
made it difficult to survive.”

The program closed with the
camera following an old man in Novgorod carefully reassembling fragments of a
destroyed fresco in which saints quietly peer out of the plaster. He and his
wife have been repairing such war-shattered images since 1945. They expect to
finish their lives still doing it. Patiently they were restoring the past, not
only the past maimed by bombs but by those determined to destroy the very
thought of God.

“I will forgive
Gorbachev any mistake he makes just for the sake of one great deed,” said
my friend Sergei as the credits appeared on the television screen, “that
he has ended the war against religious faith.”

– e n d –

Postscript

In the
months since this text was handed over to the publisher, a number of
significant events affecting Soviet religious life have occurred.

Patriarch
Pimen, who had headed the Russian Orthodox Church for nineteen years, died in
Moscow May 3, 1990. Once a prisoner of the Gulag, he had lived to see the
resurrection of religious life in the Soviet Union. Pimen was respected in the
Russian Church as a man of prayer and spiritual discipline, yet also regarded as
someone who had made far too many compromises with the enemies of the Church.
Always praising the “peaceful policies” of the Soviet government,
Pimen had never raised his voice to protest violations of the rights of Soviet
religious believers. Neither had he ever expressed any reservations about
Soviet military interventions in Afghanistan or elsewhere. He once confessed to
a visitor that he was a “prisoner in a gilded cage.”

For the
first time since Soviet power was established, the selection of the head the
Russian Orthodox Church occurred without state interference. At the Church
Council June 5-10, delegates (one bishop, one married priest, and one layperson
from each diocese plus heads of convents and monasteries) could freely nominate
and then choose between various candidates rather than rubber stamp one name
that had been approved by the Council for Religious Affairs. The leading
contenders were Metropolitan Alexi of Leningrad, Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev,
and Metropolitan Vladimir of Rostov. In a session that went four hours over
schedule, ending at 11 pm on June 7, Alexi was chosen on the second ballot.

An
Estonian of German descent, Alexi’s election was a surprise to those who had
assumed the Russian Church must surely want a Russian Patriarch. The 61-year-old
bishop was seen as someone personally committed to perestroika and
capable of speaking truthfully. In 1987, a time when many church leaders were
still silent, Alexi told a reporter from Moscow News that believers
“were sometimes treated as ‘second-rate’ people and looked at with a
certain suspicion and watchfulness.” He said he was “greatly pleased
that the time for radical changes in our society has come.” Shortly before
the Council, visiting the newly reopened monastery of Valaam, Alexi had delivered
a sermon mourning communism’s mass murder of believers and the destruction of
churches. (By contrast, in an interview broadcast on Radio Moscow in 1977,
Alexi had recited the usual script, maintaining that one’s religious faith or
lack of it “never affects employment, promotion and the like” in the
USSR while those “who insult the religious views of believers are brought
to account.”) Long active in the ecumenical movement, Alexi was a member
of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches and has been chairman
of the Conference of European Churches since 1986.

That the
Russian Orthodox Church was headed in a new direction was made clear by
Patriarch Alexi two weeks after his election when he announced that plans were
underway to canonize the “new martyrs” — Christians who were
executed or perished in the Gulag during the Soviet period.

On June
12, Patriarch Alexi was received by President Gorbachev, a renewed indication
of Gorbachev’s awareness that the fate of perestroika is bound up with
national religious vitality. Seizing the opportunity to press for modification
of draft legislation pending before the Supreme Soviet, Alexi asked Gorbachev
to back optional religious education in school. To do otherwise, Alexi told
Gorbachev, would be “a step back from the development of the democratic
process.”

It was
disturbing that, in Gorbachev’s sixth year in office, the old repressive
religious laws — though much ignored in practice — still remained on the
books. After two years of promises that the new law on Freedom of Conscience
would be enacted “very soon,” it was only on May 30, 1990, that the
draft was given its first reading by the Supreme Soviet and not until June 5,
with the Council of the Russian Orthodox Church convening, that the text was
made public, filling much of page two of Izvestia.

On most
points the draft law was as expected: religious societies are granted legal
status; religious education is permitted at church and private premises;
religious societies can acquire and own buildings and publish religious
literature; charitable activity is permitted; and church employees will be
taxed at the same rate as other citizens and be included in state social
security and pension plans.

The
parliamentary committee responsible for the draft reported sharp disagreements
within its membership on the issue of instruction. A minority advocated that
religious education should be available in public schools on an optional basis;
the majority flatly opposed religious — but not atheist — education on state
premises. A third view was that both religious and atheist classes should be
private. (The possibility that Soviet students might soon be free to decide
whether or not to study atheism, and that such courses would no longer be
offered in public schools or be paid for by state money, must be causing many
sleepless nights to professional atheists.)

The draft
text no longer required a certain number of individuals to register a religious
group but only required registration of the group’s constitution. The refusal
to register a religious society could, under the new law, be appealed in court.

The draft
implied that the Council for Religious Affairs would be altered but only
slightly. A new bureaucracy, established at the national level by the Council
of Ministers, would coordinate the work of equivalent agencies in the
republics.

The
agency, however modified, is likely to be ignored in the more autonomy-minded
republics. Estonia and Latvia are already drafting their own religious
legislation, while the government in Georgia recently announced the abolition
of the local Council for Religious Affairs. The legislature in Georgia is
drafting a law intended to guarantee the “real and complete independence
of the church from the state.” Lithuania has taken similar steps.

The
Supreme Soviet asked the government to present comments and proposals from the
public on the draft law to the drafting commission by September 15. If all goes
smoothly — but very little goes smoothly in the Soviet Union — the new law could
be passed as early as the fall of 1990.

Among
items conspicuously missing from the draft law was a section on conscientious
objection. “The army flatly opposed this and succeeded in blocking
it,” a friend working in church administration in Moscow told me,
“but there is still the chance that the Deputies will put it back once the
debate is under way.” The war in Afghanistan left a bad taste in
everyone’s mouth. There is much more respect than there used to be for those
young men who refuse to put on the military uniform and now form the main
category of prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union.

Neither
does the draft law affirm the duty of the government to return property that it
confiscated in earlier years. In many areas local authorities continue to
resist the return of religious buildings. According to Mikhail Mikhailov, an
official of the Council for Religious Affairs, as of June 1990, believers were
seeking the return of 18,000 places of worship, buildings now in use as stores,
shops, sports halls, and museums, though an estimated 5,000 of these buildings
are in an advanced state of decay.

It is not
only church buildings that are in danger of falling down. The unity of the
Orthodox Church is under strain.

In the
western Ukraine, where the Ukrainian Catholic Church has been legalized,
division became steadily sharper as many parishes formerly under Moscow’s
administration opted for Rome. In town after town, a tug of war was underway
for the church keys. (In an interview published in Izvestia June 16,
Patriarch Alexi proposed a democratic approach to the problem: “In my view
it has to be solved this way,” he said. “If the majority in the
parish are [Uniate] Catholics, the church should belong to them. Otherwise it
should belong to the Orthodox.” He suggested a commission with
representatives from the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Catholic Church,
the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and the Vatican work to solve particular
problems. “It is unacceptable,” he said, “that the Uniates in Lvov
should seize all the churches, not leaving the Orthodox anywhere to worship.
Since February our priests in many places in the western Ukraine have had to
conduct services in the open air.”)

Even
beyond the western Ukraine, in areas where there is no attraction to Rome, some
Orthodox pastors were considering withdrawing their parishes from the authority
of the Moscow Patriarchate and becoming part of the Russian Orthodox Church in
Exile (sometimes called the Synodal Church), set up outside the Soviet Union
following the Revolution.

“For
many decades now the Russian Orthodox Church has operated in a state of
non-freedom, kow-towing to an anti-Christian power,” Father Sergei Popov,
an organizer of an non-official All-Russia Orthodox Conference, told the Moscow
News in June. “At a time when heated discussions are going on in
society about the history and destiny of the country, the leadership of the
Moscow Patriarchate keeps silent about its activities and accuses clergy and
laymen who are trying to voice their views on church life of schismatic or
anti-church activities. . . . We call on the church leaders of the Moscow
Patriarchate to find strength within themselves to put an end to the unseemly
dependence on an atheistic regime and anti-Christian ideology . . . “

In
Suzdal, an ancient town east of Moscow, a bitter dispute between the pastor of
the local Orthodox church, Father Valentin Rusantsev, and his bishop reached
such a boil that the whole parish voted to withdraw from the Moscow
Patriarchate and place itself within the Synodal Church.

In his Moscow
News interview, Father Sergei Popov said many parishes were likely to take
the same step unless the Moscow Orthodox leadership publicly repented of past
compromises with the state: “Just look around,” he said. “In
Poland the Catholic Church saves the country from civil war. In the GDR the
Evangelical Church initiates the entire democratic process. In Romania the
Patriarch confessed his sins and retired. But we don’t hear the repentant voice
in our church apparat.”

Yet in
many towns and cities, new Orthodox parishes linked to the Moscow Patriarchate
were taking root where no church had existed in generations.

While in
Siberia for three weeks in the spring of 1990, I had the good fortune to
witness the process at an unlikely location: Akademgorodok, near Novosibirsk,
established 35 years ago by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Akademgorodok is
said to have the highest educational level of any municipality in the Soviet
Union. The first public Liturgy of the Church of All the Saints Who Illumined
Russia was on Pentecost Sunday. There was no church building, though the town
council had recently agreed in principle that one could be erected, the only
issue still to be resolved being the new church’s location. Despite cool grey
weather that turned to rain and finally became a downpour, hundreds gathered at
the edge of a park around an makeshift outdoor altar that stood under a freshly
painted plywood roof. The worshippers ranged from recently baptized physicists
to babushkas who never imagined they would live to see a church coming to live
in “a town of science.”

Afterward
I talked to Natasha Gorelova, a mathematician who had played the key role in
forming the local church. It was too bad the weather hadn’t been better, I told
her. “Oh,” she said, “but it was perfect weather! I feel as if
we were all baptized.”

In 1989
Metropolitan Filaret of Kiev told me that “when the weather is good, it is
good for everyone.” Unfortunately this is far from true for Soviet Jews.
“For us it would be truer to say,” a Russian Jew told me, “that
when the weather is good, not only children come into the sunlight but also
villains.”

While Jews
have been able to establish new synagogues and open their first legal yeshiva,
anti-Semitism has become increasingly open and vicious. Pamyat, a movement
ostensibly set up to preserve architectural monuments, published a manifesto in
1989 calling for “the spiritual regeneration and the unification of the
People of our [Russian] Fatherland, worn down and plundered by aggressive
Zionism, Talmudic atheism, and cosmopolitan usury.” This spring Pamyat
members in Novosibirsk disrupted a meeting honoring the victims of Stalin,
shouting “there was no Stalinism — only Judeo-fascism.”

Despite a
public letter from Orthodox priests calling on the church leaders to help
safeguard Soviet Jews, activity to counter growing anti-Semitism still seemed
far down the list of Church priorities.

In April
an average of 2000 Jews a day were applying for exit visas. Israel expects to
receive 150,000 Soviet Jews in 1990.

“I
don’t especially want to live in Israel,” said a Jewish doctor in
Leningrad who is one of those who has decided to leave his homeland. “I
don’t agree with many of its policies, especially in regard to Palestinians.
Nor am I one of the people who has so much to complain about life in the Soviet
Union. We have a decent apartment and we eat well enough even if there are
shortages. Our home is here. Our memories are here. Our friends are here. But
nearly every day we receive anonymous phone calls. Sometimes there are warnings
in our mail box. They threaten me, they threaten my wife, they threaten our
children. There are several cases in Leningrad where Jews have been attacked
and their apartments burned. We cannot live in such an atmosphere. And we are
given no protection. We are told by the police that we are making up these
stories. Israel is the only country that will accept us, so we will go to
Israel.”

A Jew in
Novosibirsk, on the other hand, said she will not leave. “Yes, there are
threats, but the ones who make these calls dare not say who they are. They are
more afraid than we are. We have lived with such neighbors all our lives and
our parents and grandparents before us. And is it any safer for Jews in Israel
than here? Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.”

Nikolai
Gogol knew Russian devils inside and out. In Dead Souls, he pictured
Russia as a speeding troika, its team of three horses in the charge of a
vodka-soaked driver who has fallen asleep. “The road is like a cloud of
smoke, the bridges thunder, and everything falls back and is left far behind.
The spectator drops dead, struck dumb by the divine miracle: is it not a flash
of lightning thrown down by heaven? What is the meaning of this terrifying
motion? And what mysterious force is hidden in these horses the like of which
the world has never seen. . . . Russia, where are you flying to? Answer! She
gives no answer . . . “

A recent
painting by the popular Moscow artist, Ivan Glazinov, offers a panoramic view
of Russian history as exemplified by its heroes — a crowd of saints, writers,
composers, czars, and generals. In the background to the right one notices
Gogol’s troika carrying two of the Soviet Union’s leading dead souls:
Stalin and Trotsky. Lenin is close behind. Their sleds are skimming along a
course of chalk-white corpses. In the background there is a red-illumined
horizon of Soviet architecture and statuary. None of this is reflected on the
surface of the lake before these ominous structures. Here instead is the
upside-down image of Moscow’s ivory and gold Savior Cathedral, dynamited in
1931, now the site of an outdoor swimming pool. In this modern corner of his
work, Glazinov seems to conclude that Russia was sent on a fool’s errand by the
Bolsheviks. Those condemned to death by the revolution were as numberless as
flakes of snow in the Russian winter. Where beauty existed, most of it was torn
down and replaced by ugliness.

While the
painting is like a Cecil B. DeMille movie poster sagging under the weight of
its cast of thousands, still the message is appreciated. Reproductions of the
painting now hang on many walls in Russian homes, a reproach to Soviet history
and a condemnation of the omnipresent tackiness.

Soviet
ugliness never ceases to offend me: hideous blocks of apartment buildings that
resemble filing cabinets, stores without grace, restaurants without charm, mass
transit in which there is hardly room to raise an eyebrow.

Yet the
love for beauty is not destroyed, not in Russia and not in any of its adjacent
republics. From one edge of the USSR to the other, places of worship are being
restored, with support coming not only from active believers but from many of
their non-believing neighbors. For some these building are places of prayer,
for others they serve to refresh the soul simply by being beautiful.

It is not
merely a question of architecture. Wherever one travels in the Soviet Union,
one hears the same thing from Christians, Jews, Moslems, and Buddhists: the
restoration of beauty and truth in both flesh and spirit requires a rebirth of
religious life. It is the longing to recover the lost center of spiritual life
that explains much of the religious fervor so evident in every region of the
Soviet Union.

Yet at
the same time, given the uncovering of the past with all its lies and horrors,
it is a time when many have become aware of their complicity, and the
complicity of their parents and grandparents, in structures of destruction.
Patriotic songs that used to bring tears to the eye of millions of Soviet
citizens are now referred to only with bitterness. There is a sense of betrayal
reminiscent of what many Americans felt during the Vietnam war and its
Watergate aftermath. In such a social climate, one can easily prefer to see the
sins of others rather than one’s own, and to be possessed by thoughts of
separation, punishment and retribution.

In the
Soviet Union, as in every country, so much depends on the depth and purity of
religious life. Without it, without dukhovnost, repentance, forgiveness
and healing cannot occur. Without dukhovnost the Russian troika will
continue its nightmare ride over the dead.

It is at
this crossroad that the 290,000,000 citizens of the USSR find themselves.

[6] . For a general
overview of Soviet legislation on religion, see Trevor Beeson, Discretion
and Valour: Religious Conditions in Russia and Eastern Europe (London:
Collins; Philadelphia: Fortress Press; revised 1982), pp 22-50. For a study of
the revisions of 1975, see Walter Sawatsky, “The New Soviet Law on
Religion,” Religion in Communist Lands, vol. 4, no. 2, pp 5-10.

[7] . On February 5,
1989, Leonid Sizov, First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs, stated that 356
persons regarded in the west as “prisoners of conscience,” including
those convicted of religious activity, had been released in the past two years.
Other prisoners remained, however. In March 1989 Keston College reported 86
religious prisoners of conscience in the USSR; many were convicted for refusing
military service.

[8] . Speaking at the
Higher School of the Communist Party in Moscow a few weeks before the Kremlin
meeting, Kharchev said: “Remember the Leninist idea, that politics begins
when you start to talk in terms of millions. . . . The church has survived, and
has not only survived but has rejuvenated herself. And the question arises,
which is more useful to the Party — someone who believes in God, or someone
who believes in nothing at all, or someone who believes in both God and
communism? I think we should choose the lesser evil.” He went on to
advocate “the training of a new type of priest” whose placement would
be “a matter for the Party.” The underlying argument for the new
policy toward religion, for Kharchev at least, was that it would make believers
collaborators in achieving goals set by the Communist Party.

[9] . A thousand years
ago Rus’ centered on Kiev whose Prince in 988 was Vladimir. Extending from
territory north of Novgorod to lands well below Kiev, Rus’ was ruled
collectively by the family of Rurik whose most senior member had the throne of
Kiev. In the Thirteenth Century Tatar forces destroyed Kiev, forcing the center
of Russian culture to the north. Moscow was only a small river settlement in
the days of Grand Prince Vladimir. First mentioned in the Chronicle in 1147, it
became the seat of the Metropolitan of All Russia in the Fourteenth Century,
the same period when the prince of Moscow, Ivan at that time, became the Grand
Prince of All Russia. In the Fifteenth Century the Russian Church became
self-governing. In 1589 Patriarch Jeremiah of Constantinople enthroned Metropolitan
Job as the first Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia. In 1593, a meeting of the
four Patriarchs in Constantinople recognized the Moscow as the fifth ranking
patriarchate.

[10] . At the Party
Conference in June 1988, Gorbachev spoke briefly about the rights of believers:
“We do not conceal our view that the religious world is unmaterialistic
and unscientific, yet this is no reason for disrespect toward those who believe
in the spiritual world and still less a reason to use administrative means to
advance materialistic views. . . . All believers, no matter what their
religious views, are citizens of the USSR with full rights. . . . The draft Law
on Freedom of Conscience which is in preparation in based on Leninist
principles and takes into account all present-day realities.”

[11] . “A brief
description of the Moscow Czars, of their appearance, age, habits and
disposition” quoted by Nicolas Zernov in The Russians and their Church
(Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, third edition, 1978), pp
66-67.

[12] . The Cathedral of
the Savior, on the south side of the Moscva River across from the Kremlin, was
Moscow’s largest church. Built late in the Nineteenth Century, it was blown up
on Stalin’s order on December 5, 1931. He intended it to be the location for a
towering Palace of Soviets to be crowned by a 75 meter high statue of Lenin. In
the end all that was built was an outdoor swimming pool. In 1989 many
Muscovites signed a petition calling for the reconstruction of the cathedral.

[14]. On October 10, 1989, in connection with the celebration of the
400th anniversary of the founding of the Moscow Patriarchate, Patriarch Tikhon
was canonized.

[15]. “Under Merciful Protection,” a two-hour history of the
Russian Orthodox Church, was distributed in video cassette form to Council
participants and guests. In addition to scenes of the destruction of churches
and monasteries, it includes photos of some of the human casualties. “The
church had to suffer persecution and lose many faithful,” said the
narrator before a series of photos were shown of bishops, abbots and priests
who perished. Each martyr’s name was recited as his photo receded slowly into
darkness.

[18] . A few weeks later
he received Raisa Gorbachev who, Izvestia reported, “showed great
interest in the spiritual sources of Slavic culture.” Father Jonathan and
she discussed the Russian Primary Chronicle.

[20] . The Decembrists
were officers who attempted to force a constitutional government on the czar in
December 1825. Five of its leaders were executed and many others sent in chains
to work the mines in Siberia.

[21] . In 1989 Russian
Easter was on April 30, more than a month after Easter had been celebrated in
western churches. On average the date for Easter coincides in East and West
every four years.

[22] . Vladimir Soloviev
(1853-1900), friend and disciple of Dostoyevsky, who worked to overcome
division between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. One of his essays,
“Beauty, Sexuality, and Love”, is included in Ultimate Questions:
An Anthology of Modern Russian Orthodox Thought, ed. Alexander Schmemann
(Crestwood., NY: Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press), pp. 71-136.

[23] . Dimitri Dudko
served more than eight years in labor camps for the possession of religious
poetry. Ordained to the priesthood in 1960 and assigned to a church in Moscow,
his sermons — often touching on taboo subjects — drew many into the Church.
He later began a series of Saturday evening catechetical dialogues (besedy)
with those wishing to deepen their understanding of Christianity. No doubt
bowing to government pressure, the Orthodox Church reassigned him to a parish
50 miles from Moscow. Nonetheless many Muscovites managed to go their for
services. One of his controversial actions was to openly support the
canonization of believers martyred by Communists, including Czar Nicholas II
and members of his family. He was arrested in January 1980 by twelve KGB
officers, all the religious literature in his home was confiscated, and he was
taken to the infamous Lefortovo prison in Moscow where presumably he was
subjected to intense pressures. He was released six months later after making a
public statement regretting his “anti-Soviet slanders” and declaring
that he had learned that “God’s work is done meekly and quietly, patiently
and humbly, not in the way I imagined.” A collection of his dialogue
sermons, Our Hope, has been published in the West (Crestwood, NY: Saint
Vladimir’s Seminary Press; 1977).

[30] . Romil quoted
Solzhenitsyn from memory but when I checked my notes against the text, I found
he had it nearly verbatim. In Solzhenitsyn’s essay, “Repentance and
Self-Limitation,” there is a related passage: “But with the soulless
reforms of Nikon and Peter the Great began the extirpation and suppression of
the Russian national spirit, and our capacity for repentance began to dry up.
The monstrous punishment of the Old Believers — the burnings at the stake, the
red-hot pincers, the impalements on meat hooks, the dungeons — followed for
two and a half centuries by the senseless repression of twelve million meek and
defenseless fellow-countrymen, and their dispersal to the most uninhabitable
regions of the country or even expulsion from the country — all this is a sin
for which the established Church has never proclaimed its repentance. This is
bound to weigh heavily on the whole future of Russia.” (From Under the
Rubble, Boston, MA: Little Brown & Co., 1975, translation by Michael
Scammell)

[32] . Also to be noted is
the independent Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. Nearly destroyed by
repression, it began to emerge from the underground in 1989. On August 14 the
Church of Saints Peter and Paul in Lvov broke away from the Russian Orthodox
Church, calling on Patriarch Demetrios in Istanbul to take the parish under his
protection. The Lvov Council for Religious Affairs rejected the application by
the church for registration and warned that the church building would be closed
if the congregation did not return to the Russian Orthodox Church. The priests
were warned that they were breaking the law if they officiated at a Liturgy in
the church. The CRA tried to seize the church but was stopped by a picket line
surrounding the building organized by the Ukrainian Popular Front and the
Ukrainian Helsinki Union. In September two congregations in villages of the
western Ukraine declared their adherence to the Ukrainian Autocephalous
Orthodox Church. (Keston News Service, nos. 333 and 335)

[33] . Ogorodnikov founded
the Christian Seminar in Moscow in 1974. The seminar brought together young
intellectuals recently converted to Orthodoxy who wanted to discuss their newfound
faith, build up a Christian fellowship, and carry out missionary work. Expelled
from academic institutions, they were forced to take menial jobs. Ogorodnikov
was arrested in 1978, charged with “parasitism” (not being gainfully
employed) and was sentenced to a year in a labor camp. Just before his release
a new charge was filed against him, anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda, and
he was sentenced to six years in a strict-regime labor camp to be followed by
five-years of internal exile. In April 1986 he was given a further three-year
sentence for “malicious disobedience to the requirements of the
administration of a corrective labor camp.” In February 1987, along with
Father Gleb Yakunin and 138 others, he was released. It was an action, Izvestia
reported, responding “to the spirit of perestroika.” Once
freed, Ogorodnikov founded a new publication, The Bulletin of Christian
Community.

[44] . As with so many
institutions that seem peculiarly Soviet, this too had its model in czarist
Russia. A Central Spiritual Moslem Directorate, analogous to the
government-controlled Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, was established
by Catherine II in the Eighteenth Century.

[47] . In early February
1989, shortly after this interview, there was a demonstration in Tashkent
organized by a new movement, Islam and Democracy, in which an estimated 2500
people called for “purification of the Moslem establishment” whose
“reputation had been destroyed by close alliance with the state.”
Soon afterward the Mufti resigned.

On February 23 Pravda Vostoka, the regional
newspaper, reported that the First Secretary of the Communist Party in
Uzbekistan, P.N. Nishanov, criticized “forceful methods” used in the
past “to break up peoples’ traditions and to forbid centuries-old rites
and customs.” He called on Party committees to “refrain from the
administrative, bureaucratic approach to religious questions.” At the same
time he stressed that Communists and Komsomol members “should not
participate directly in religious rites” because “a true affirmation
of the new political thinking in relation to religion does not mean ideological
compromise with it.”

At an extraordinary congress of the Moslem Board March
15, Muhammad Sadiq Mamayusupov was chosen as the new Chief Mufti. Born in 1952,
he was head of the Higher Islamic Institute in Tashkent. While previous
conferences of the Board had involved only carefully selected delegates, the
congress was open to all imams in the region. In an interview in Pravda
Vostoka, the new Mufti expressed satisfaction in the new atmosphere with
regard to church-state relations and the return of many mosques, including
Bukhara’s famous Kalyan mosque. (Keston News Service, numbers 321, 323)

[48] . The April 10 1989
issue of the international edition of Time magazine, in captioning a
photo of the Registan Square, reported the return of one of the Registan
mosques, presumably the Tillah-Kari mosque, as a place of worship.

[52] . For the first time
since its confiscation in 1918, the Holy Liturgy was celebrated in the
Kremlin’s Dormition Cathedral October 13, 1989.

[53] . In 1919 another
encyclical warned clergy to stand aloof from politics of any kind. In 1923,
after a term of imprisonment, Patriarch Tikhon published a confession
regretting that he had succumbed to a “negative attitude to Soviet
power.”

[56] . In 1935 it claimed
a membership of five million and fifty-thousand local groups. Under its
auspices children between eight and fourteen were enrolled in Groups of Godless
Youth. A huge troop of “godless missionaries” were established to
give lectures up and down the country. Prizes were given for the best
“godless hymns.” “Godless bibles” were published and
museums of religion and atheism set up. In Moscow a particular thoroughfare was
named Godless Street.

[57] . Ogonyok,
issue 50. The interviewer was the journalist Alexander Nezhny, respected in
Russian Christian circles for his integrity.

[58] . During a subsequent
visit to Britain, Kharchev said that the Soviet Academy of Sciences had also
been consulted.

[59] . Sourozh: A Journal
of Orthodox Life and Thought, Oxford, England, May 1989, translated by
Benedict Roffey.

[60] . In the Ogonyok interview
with Konstantin Kharchev published in December, two weeks before this
interview, Kolesnik was held up as an example of officials obstructing the
rights of believers. He cited the attempt to register a church by villagers in
Podgaichiki in the Ternopil region of the Ukraine. Local officials refused,
said Kharchev, adding that Kolesnik, “who ought to have explained to these
comrades that they were violating Soviet legislation, authenticated their
refusal with his signature.” The villagers, he said, had to come to Moscow
to seek justice. Such actions, he said, were “a most harmful and dangerous
thing for our perestroika.” Kharchev added: “And what if a
person can’t find support in Moscow either? What if here too he comes up
against a bureaucrat, an indifferent executive, a cold functionary? All this
happens! Then he’ll return and say to the people at home: there is no justice,
don’t look for it.”

[61] . In an interview
published in Izvestia February 1, 1989, Kolesnik said that 430 Orthodox
churches had been registered in the Ukraine in 1988, mainly in western regions
that had been “a bulwark of Uniates.” He said that his office had
received statements signed by thousands of citizens living in these regions
“requesting to register precisely an Orthodox society and not that of some
other religion.” It was his opinion that believers were not concerned
whether the church near their home belonged to Rome or Moscow but nonetheless
be saw a trend toward Orthodoxy. “Even those who only yesterday made use
of the services of itinerant Uniate priests are today attending an Orthodox
Church.” He said many disapprove of Uniates “because of their
alliance with outspoken supporters of ideas of Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism
. . . ” (Keston New Service 321, March 16, 1989)

[62] . A local Orthodox
priest took a critical view of the Ukrainian Council for Religious Affairs. He
credited the return of the Monastery of the Caves and other churches to
insistence from Moscow rather than local political will. He was frustrated with
the local Council’s resistance to churches undertaking programs of social
service. “Believers in Moscow and Leningrad are able to do volunteer
service in hospitals. We want to do the same here but lawyers of the Council
here say it is against the law. Kharchev in Moscow says the old law should be
regarded as extinct but here they say that until there is a new law, they have
to make their decisions by the old law. This is how it is.”

[63] . In a letter to me
dated October 27, 1989, Rafig Abdullaev updated the figures. Since we met, he
said, the CRA in Azerbaijan had registered another three mosques, bringing the
total in 37. He also noted two more Armenian churches, a Georgian church, one
more Molokan church, and one church “for those between Molokan Baptist.”
Altogether there were 74 registered religious communities. In addition, he
noted “more than 40 small Molokan and Baptist groups” not officially
registered but known to the CRA. “Soon we are going to register more than
30 [additional] Moslem and Christian communities.”

[64] . In mid-June 1989,
Yuri Khristorandov was appointed head of the Council for Religious Affairs.

[65] . Among regulations
promulgated in this period were the prohibition of church engagement in
charitable activity, the ban on church bell ringing, the order not to register
certain religious groups (Jehovahs Witnesses, Pentecostals, Adventists and
others), and the requirement that a religious group can have a meeting only
with prior approval and after listing the issues to be discussed and the number
if participants to take part. (Moscow News, no. 15, 1989)

[66] . The hunger strike
for the return of the Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin in
Ivanovo was begun in March 1989 by a dentist, a jurist, a cleaner and a
philologist, all women. Their campaign received considerable attention in the
Soviet press. Anatoli Golovkov, Chairman of the Ivanovo City Executive
Committee, said to a reporter, “I, for example, am sickened, frankly
speaking, between ourselves, by the expansion today of the number of believers.”
(Ogonyok no. 28, July 1989) On August 14, Izvestia reported the
church’s return to local believers, but with several conditions: that tourists
be allowed to visit the church, that the priest’s house could be used for a
museum exhibition, and — most peculiar — that there would be no funeral
services at the church.

[67] . In June 1989 Keston
College calculated that 954,000 Bibles and 1,540,000 New Testaments had been
imported into the Soviet Union since January 1988 and reported that permission
had been given for importing a further 3,688,000 Bibles and 13,025,000 New
Testaments by the end of 1995. Among major donor groups were the Taizé
Community in France, Bibles for All in Sweden, Open Doors in England, and
various national Bible Societies. In April 1989 the United Bible Societies
reported that a “memorandum of understanding” had been signed with
the Russian Orthodox Church that would open the way for printing large editions
of the Bible within the USSR and the establishment of a Soviet Bible Society.

[68] . For many years
conscientious objection to military service was one of the Soviet Union’s
prohibited topics of public discussion. Lenin’s decree of January 4, 1919,
providing exemption from military service for conscientious objectors, became
part of the Soviet Union’s lost history after Stalin came to power. In 1984 I
was one of several people from the International Fellowship of Reconciliation
who presented a photocopy of Lenin’s decree to leaders of the Soviet Peace
Committee in Moscow. They suggested it was a forgery. It was a significant sign
of the times that the Soviet Peace Committee published the decree in the
January 1989 issue of its magazine, XX Century and Peace.

[69] . A tax of 16 percent
is imposed on clergy, full-time parish workers and others paid for performing
or assisting in religious rituals, teachers at theological schools, and workers
engaged in church restoration or construction whose contracts were not concluded
under the auspices of a trade union. The normal income tax is 4.7 percent.
Persons in this higher tax category are not permitted the usual 30 percent
discount for those with four or more dependents. An article on the injustice of
this arrangement, written by a staff member of the Council for Religious
Affairs, was published in Sovetskaya Yustitsiya (Soviet Justice) in
January 1989. A summary was issued by Keston News Service, no. 320, March 2,
1989.

[70] . The 1975 Helsinki
Final Act had affirmed “the freedom of the individual to profess and
practice, alone or in community with others, religion of belief acting in
accordance with the dictates of conscience.” In January 1989, ending 26
months of negotiation, the Vienna Conference on Security and Cooperation,
attended by representatives of 35 states, including the USSR, reached accord on
a number of issues affecting religious rights. Participating states agreed to
“take effective measures to prevent and eliminate discrimination against
individuals or communities on the grounds of religion or belief . . . [and] to
ensure effective equality between believers and non-believers.” They
committed themselves “to grant upon the request of communities of
believers the right to practice their faith,” to respect the right of
religious communities “to establish and maintain freely accessible places
of worship and assembly, to organize themselves according to their own
hierarchical and institutional structure, to select, appoint or replace their
personnel in accordance with their respective requirements and standards . . .
and to solicit and receive voluntary financial and other contributions.”
The states also recognized “the right of everyone to give and receive
religious education in the language of his choice, whether individually or in
association with others” and “the liberty of parents to ensure the
religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own
convictions.”

Other sections dealt with the right to train religious
personnel, to acquire and publish religious books and to manufacture religious
articles. States were asked to “favorably consider the interest of
religious communities to participate in public dialogue, including through the
mass media.” Participating states have the right to challenge other states
if they consider that violations of rights have occurred.

A conference to review progress on human rights was
scheduled to take place in Moscow in September 1991.

[71] . The confirmed cases
included seventeen Jehovah’s Witnesses, five Pentecostals, one Georgian
Orthodox, three Moslems, and four Yogis; the sectarian membership of two
Christian prisoners was uncertain. The unconfirmed cases included one Russian
Orthodox, two Eastern-rite Catholics, one Seventh Day Adventist, six Jehovah’s Witnesses,
and twenty-four Moslems.

Twenty-three of the thirty-two confirmed cases were
conscientious objectors. “Most Soviet COs are serving sentences under
conditions similar to what in the west would be called ‘open prisons’,”
comments Keston’s Michael Rowe. “They do compulsory labor — construction
project mainly, or sometimes industrial work in remote areas. On the
unconfirmed list, two objectors are reported as serving their sentences doing
‘community labor.’ We are not sure whether this means compulsory labor or some
kind of sentence served from home. One Pentecostal CO completes his sentence
March 31. Another Pentecostal was sentenced for refusing to serve in the army
though he was never called up. At a pre-call-up interview, he declined to say
whether he would serve in the army or not; he was apparently prosecuted out of
spite, to delay the family’s emigration.”

Among the remaining prisoners, one was jailed on the
charge of “hooliganism.” A Seventh Day Adventist leader whose church
has refused to be registered was convicted of bribery and forgery though Keston
believes his religious activity was the real issue behind the charges brought
against him. The cases Keston College was least sure of concerned the Moslems,
most of whom were arrested for printing or selling the Koran. By now they may
have been released.

Two of those listed on the unconfirmed list were in
psychiatric hospitals, a dramatic change for the better in contrast with
earlier times, but still, if the reports are true, two people too many.

“Lord, how good everything is… You only have to look around you!”— Maxim Gorky’s Grandmother, My Childhood

Preface

A decade before his death, Thomas Merton noted in his
journal the realization that reconciliation is not simply a formal coming together of people who have been divided. The healing of broken relationships begins in our spiritual lives:

If I can unite in myself the thought and devotion of
Eastern and Western Christendom, the Greek and the Latin Fathers, the Russian
and the Spanish mystics, I can prepare in myself the reunion of divided
Christians. From that secret and unspoken unity in myself can eventually come a
visible and manifest unity of all Christians. If we want to bring together what
is divided, we cannot do so by imposing one division upon the other. If we do
this, the union is not Christian. It is political and doomed to further
conflict. We must contain all the divided worlds in ourselves and transcend
them in Christ.i

One
of the books that stirred Merton’s fascination with the Russian mystics was
Boris Pasternak’s novel, Doctor Zhivago. He was impressed by the
“striking and genuinely Christian elements in the outlook of Pasternak, in the
philosophy that underlies his writing.”ii In 1958, despite the formidable barrier between the United
States and the Soviet Union, Merton entered into correspondence with Pasternak.
He began reading books on Russian Orthodox theology and spirituality and even
started studying the Russian language, events which must have been startling
within a community of American Trappist monks. Undoubtedly this development in
Merton’s life was a significant factor in the subsequent writing he did on
issues of peace and nonviolence.iii

I
recall the impact Pasternak’s novel had on me in 1958. I was a high school
student in Hollywood, California, altogether uninterested in Christianity in
Russia or anywhere else, as I considered myself an agnostic. Yet, because of Dr.
Zhivago, Russia was no longer merely a cage of forbidding Cold War imagery.

A
few years later, having found my way to religious belief, I joined the Catholic
Worker community in New York City. While there I came to know the community’s
founder, Dorothy Day, and the special devotion she had to Russian writers,
Dostoyevsky most of all, but many others, including Gorky, Tolstoy, Chekhov and
Solzhenitsyn.iv This was matched by her love of the Russian Orthodox
Church. Several times she took me with her to attend the Orthodox Liturgy sung
in Slavonic.

One
evening Dorothy brought me to a Manhattan apartment for meeting of the Third
Hour, a Christian ecumenical group founded by a Russian emigré scholar, Helene
Iswolsky.v The conversation was about Russian Orthodox spirituality
— dukhovnost — a word far richer in meaning than its English counterpart,
suggesting not only a personal relationship between the praying person and God
but moral capacity, social responsibility, courage, wisdom, mercy, a readiness
to forgive, a way of life centered in love. Much of the discussion flew over my
head. I was more attentive to the remarkable face of W.H. Auden, a member of
the Third Hour group. I recall talk about the “holy fools” who wandered Russia
in continuous pilgrimage, reciting with every breath and step the silent
prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” From
that evening this prayer became part of my own spiritual life.

In
1969-70, having been part of war resisters who burned draft records to protest
the Vietnam War, I spent a year in prison. It was only then that I was un-busy
enough to read the Russian writers Dorothy had so often recommended. I hadn’t
intended to spend so much of that year with Russian authors, but each book led
me to another. The three that brought Russia most alive for me were Gorky’s
autobiographical books, My Childhood, My Apprenticeship, and My
Universities. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that his grandmother
became my grandmother. I am not sure whether it is Gorky or myself remembering
her passionate prayers before the icons in the corner of her room.vi Ever since prison, Gorky’s grandmother has been part of my
life. No less than Dorothy Day, she opened the door to “Holy Russia.”

My
profession is journalism. Much of my adult life has been spent editing peace
movement publications. One might think such work would have opened many
East-West doors. Ironically, however, for many years the peace movement in the
United States was notable for its avoidance of contact with the Soviet Union.
Perhaps because we were so routinely accused of being “tools of the Kremlin,”
peace activists tended to steer clear of Russia and rarely knew more about it
than anyone else. To utter a friendly word about the Soviet Union was to be
convicted of everything the Reader’s Digest had ever said about KGB
direction of peace groups in the west.

In the spring of 1982, after five years living in Europe
while serving on the staff of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation
(IFOR), I was on a speaking trip that took me to twenty American cities. At the
time the Nuclear Freeze movement was gathering strength. It seemed to me,
however, that despite the millions of people supporting the Freeze, its
prospects for success were slight. The Freeze, like so many other peace
campaigns, was built mainly on fear of nuclear weapons. Practically nothing was
being done to respond to relationship issues or the fear of the Soviet Union
that underlying public acceptance of the arms race.vii All that was needed was one nasty incident to burst the
balloon, and that came when a Soviet pilot shot down a Korean 747 passenger
plane flying across Soviet air space. The image of the west facing a barbaric
and ruthless enemy was instantly revived and the Freeze movement lost its
momentum. (Fortunately in more recent years both churches and peace
organizations have developed major programs of contact and dialogue linking
American and Soviet citizens.viii)

At the end of the speaking trip, while in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, Robert Ellsberg took me to see Moscow Doesn’t Believe in
Tears. I was reluctant to go, assuming it would be a propaganda exercise,
but Robert said that the film had been awarded an Oscar and, more to the point,
was one of the funniest movies he had seen in months. So we ate a Mexican meal
and went to the movies.

Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears is about economic and social classes in the “classless”
society. Centering on three women who arrive in Moscow in 1960, the film follows
their struggles to build careers and families. Despite differences in
temperament and ambition, they create an enduring friendship. Mid-way the film
jumps to the 1970s, so that we see what has happened after the passage of
fifteen years. The stories told are comic, tragic, convincing and socially
revealing. Muscovites became quite three-dimensional and not simply cardboard
figures living in the grey world of communism.

Coupled with the speaking trip, the film brought home to me
the startling truth that most of us in the peace movement, like those in the
military, knew far more about weapons than the people at whom the weapons were
aimed. I began to look for an opportunity to travel in the Soviet Union.

At the time it wasn’t easy to find an opening. The Soviet
Union was at war in Afghanistan, an event sharply condemned by the movement I
was working for. A seminar we had arranged in Moscow was abruptly cancelled on
the Soviet side. An editor of Izvestia with whom I had breakfast in
Amsterdam candidly explained that there was anxiety in the Kremlin that
pacifists from the west might unveil protest signs in Red Square. “We are not
all so stupid, but neither are we all so smart,” he said. “Try again. Next time
you may get a smarter bureaucrat.”

In the fall of 1983, Lubomir Mirejovsky, a Czech pastor who
is General Secretary of the Christian Peace Conference, suggested that
representatives of our two movements meet for a dialogue on the subject of
“Violence, Nonviolence and Liberation.” We agreed to the proposal. Metropolitan
Filaret of Minsk, head of the External Church Affairs Department of the Russian
Orthodox Church, invited us to have the meeting at his office in Moscow.

The days in Moscow that October went quickly. Much of our
time was taken up by meetings, which turned out to be quite lively, with a
depth and candor that I hadn’t anticipated. Our time for tourist activity,
unfortunately, was minimal. We had a brief visit to the Kremlin. One night we
were at the ballet, the next at the circus. Attempting to keep up with the
Russians as toast after toast was proposed, I managed to get embarrassingly
wobbly at the one meal we ate in a private home.

The most rewarding experiences of that first trip were on
the first and last nights. The first night, encouraged by a clear sky and full
moon, I had walked with a British colleague to the Kremlin and Red Square. On
the last night I set off entirely by myself, an experience recorded in the
following diary entry:

Skipping supper, I explored the Metro, Moscow’s subway system.
Dimitri, a translator assisting our meeting, gave me a map, marking stops he
especially recommended. I walked to the Kievskaya station, was caught up in the
rush-hour current, put a five-kopek coin in the turnstile, went down the
crowded escalator. For the first time in my life I was on my own among Russian
people.

My project was to explore half-a-dozen stations but it
wasn’t always easy to easy to know where I was. My map was in English, the
signs in Russian. This proved a fast way to learn the basics of the Cyrillic
alphabet.

The stations are everything they are said to be: no two
alike, immaculate, free of graffiti. Some have an almost Moorish simplicity,
some resemble baroque churches. The decoration includes mosaics, stained glass
and sculpture. In one station crystal chandeliers run the length of the central
corridor between platforms and above the train tracks as well. Each station is
a work of art.

But what stirred me most was simply to be in the thick of
Russian people. While some wore the military uniforms, the center piece of
western imagery of the USSR, most people were in clothing that wouldn’t attract
special notice in London or New York — nothing fancy, but nothing threadbare
either. The differences were less striking than the similarities. As for the
faces, I could have found all of them, and the moods they registered, in any
bus or subway in North America or West Europe.

As it was early in the evening when I started out, the
passengers included children. One round-faced child stared at me — perhaps
because of my beard — with an expression divided between shyness and
curiosity. Sitting on her father’s lap, gripping his hand, her head pressed
against his chest, she looked like my seven-year-old Wendy.

In New York, where subways are an ordeal, I was always
grateful whenever a couple in love came into the car. They changed the
atmosphere in a remarkable way, dissolving the tension and anxiety. I felt
blessed by them and felt others did too. The fact that couples of the same sort
ride the Moscow Metro surprised me. It was a revelation of how dehumanized our
perceptions have become after so many years of readiness for war. But of course
people fall in love in the Soviet Union as passionately as they do anywhere in
the world. In one crowded Metro car, I happened to be jammed against a young
couple whose heads were gently inclined toward each other so that their noses
touched. They were oblivious to everyone around them.

No less important than people-watching was having to ask
for help in stations where Metro lines intersect. Each time I found someone who
not only would point the way but take me to the right platform. It was
encouraging to discover how much could be done despite language barriers.

That first trip in the USSR was something like riding
through a museum of fine arts on a bicycle. I saw wonderful things, but too
fast to take them in and with far too little understanding of Russian and
Soviet history to make much sense of even those things which weren’t a blur.
But the trip was enough for me to know that I wanted to come back, see things
more slowly, and talk with Russians. I had a particular sense of connection
with the Russian Orthodox Church and longed to have the chance to meet
believers informally and face to face.

Back in Holland, I wrote to Archbishop (now Metropolitan)
Pitirim, head of the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, asking
if I might have the cooperation of his department in writing a book about the
Orthodox Church in Russia. It would not be, I said, an academic work. Others
had done such books and in any event I was not qualified. But I had spent much
of my adult life doing interviews for peace and church magazines, worked for
various newspapers and press services, had written two biographies and many
essays. I felt I could write a book about Russian believers, if the church
could provide a translator and help me visit centers of Orthodoxy — churches,
seminaries, and monasteries.

While it took a long time to make all the arrangements, the
letter eventually received a positive response.

In discussing this book with friends, the question was
sometimes asked: Why only the Russian Orthodox Church? Why not other churches
and religious groups in the Soviet Union? My answer is that I have found myself
particularly at home in Russian Orthodox churches. But one can add that, with
an estimated fifty-million members, the Russian Orthodox Church is the largest
religious body in the Soviet Union and the most deeply rooted institution of
Russian culture. At the same time, Orthodoxy is quite foreign to western
Christians who often find its ornate ritual and imagery, not to mention its
patriarchal structure, positively revolting. If there is ever to be a drawing
together of Christians across their many divisions, we need to have a much
deeper understanding of Orthodoxy. (Even so, I hope to write a book about other
religious communities in the USSR, not only the other Christian churches but
Jews, Moslems and Buddhists.)

Much of the text that follows is based on letters I wrote to
my wife, Nancy, in the course of my travels in the USSR. The letters form a
daybook. The last section of the book owes much the journal Nancy kept while we
were travelling together last summer. While I considered organizing the text
thematically rather than as a journal, to do so would have obliterated the
gradual process of discovery. Thus certain topics like worship and icons are
touched on repeatedly. These are at the heart of the Orthodox spiritual life
and continue to open in new and often surprising ways for me.

Some readers will miss attention in these pages to the
“suffering Church.” Especially in the ‘20s and ‘30s, the Church produced many
martyrs. Thousands of churches were closed. Many bishops, priests, nuns and lay
believers were imprisoned or executed. While Stalin’s policy changed in a more
positive direction following Hitler’s attack on the USSR, even to the present-day
believers have often been penalized for their faith, especially if they
expressed resistance. Also Bibles and prayer books are produced in far smaller
quantities than are needed. Such aspects of Soviet life, however, have been the
subject of many books and thousands of press articles. My concern here is to
show what is so often ignored — the vitality and hospitality of the Church
despite its innumerable sorrows and difficulties.

The work on this book has had a quite unexpected impact on
my spiritual and family life. Soon after my first trip to Moscow, Nancy started
cooking occasional Russian meals. More important, each night we began to pray
before Russian icons, standing up as Russians do and often using prayers from
the Orthodox liturgy. Perhaps I was more surprised than any of my friends when
I finally took the step of joining the Russian Orthodox Church, being received
a week ago, Palm Sunday, by Fr. Alexis Voogd and the congregation of the Church
of St. Nicholas of Myrna in Amsterdam. Nancy looks forward to taking the same
step on Pentecost.

— Jim Forest

Second Day of Easter, 1988

Alkmaar, Holland

acknowledgements

First of all, within the Russian Orthodox Church, I am
indebted to Metropolitan Pitirim of Volokolamsk, head of the Publishing
Department, and his assistant Tatiana Volgina; and to Metropolitan Fileret of
Minsk, head of the Department of External Church Affairs, and to Georgi
Derevianchenko, assistant to the chairman of that department. I also owe
special thanks to Vasili Maknev, Fr. Boris Udovenko, Archdeacon Vladimir
Nazarkin, Nina Babrova, Fr. Georgi Goncharov, Vladimir and Ludmilla Tyschuk,
and Tatiana Tchernikova.

My thanks also go to Diana Francis, President of the
International Fellowship of Reconciliation, and other members of the IFOR
Steering Committee, who allowed me time to travel in the USSR. Without their
encouragement and support, this book would have been impossible.

The saying is that there are no good authors, only good
editors. In my case these are Michael Leach of Crossroad/Continuum in New York
and, at Marshall Pickering in England, Debbie Thorpe, Christine Wittell, and
Rebecca Winter.

Finally, my gratitude goes to my wife, Nancy. These pages
reflect a pilgrimage we have been making together. The text was first of all a
thick sheaf of letters to her. She has since then helped me in the work of
revision. Her own diary for the Russian trip we took together last summer,
during which I only kept notes, was the starting point of the final section of
this book.

— JF

October 1984

In the fall of
1984 I received a telex from Archbishop Pitirim of Volokolamsk, head of the
Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, inviting me to Moscow to
discuss my proposal to write a book about the Russian Orthodox Church. The
visit was extended a further week in order to take part in a meeting of
representatives of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Soviet
Peace Committee.

Moscow,
October 19, 1984: The afternoon flight of
KLM from Amsterdam to Moscow stops briefly in Warsaw. Coming down I had a good
look at farms in the surrounding region. The fields are often thin strips,
making a patchwork quilt that has no coherent pattern, neighbors linked by dirt
roads. Not much traffic.

The cloud cover over western Russia prevented even a
glimpse of the land, but we had an above-the-clouds view of a sunset that
turned all the western sky blood-red.

In the Moscow airport, the person checking my bags took a
great interest in a book of wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg, many of which
have a religious theme. Finally he summoned his superior. The scrutiny they
gave to these pages will reassure Fritz that art continues to be a high-risk
vocation. I think what finally got me through without loss of any books or
papers was the indignant fuss I made.

In the waiting area beyond customs, Tatiana Tchernikova
introduced herself. A slim woman with auburn hair, she is a member of the staff
of the Department for External Church Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church. A
battered car and friendly driver were waiting in the parking lot. On our way
into central Moscow, I mentioned Fred Mayer’s remarkable photos in The
Orthodox Church in Russia.ix It turns out Tanya, as she suggests I call her, travelled
with Mayer when he was taking the photos.

We went to the Ukraina Hotel, one of Moscow’s monumental
heaps of stone left from the Stalin years, a kind of granite wedding cake. It
stands on the bank of the Moskva River a few miles west of Red Square. After
getting me registered, Tanya was off, promising to return for breakfast. Unable
to sleep, I decided to walk to the Kremlin. This took me down Kalinin Prospekt
past a parade of sleek modern buildings. Getting closer to the Kremlin (the
Russian word for fortress), older buildings began to appear, including a former
church, its onion domes intact but the crosses lopped off. Now an exhibition
hall, it must have been a beautiful church in its day.

A year ago I first walked this avenue. It was a later hour,
when there was hardly a soul to be seen and practically no traffic. On the way
back on that first walk, it was past midnight which meant that I had this wide
thoroughfare entirely to myself. I remember wondering, “Is someone watching me?
Can a lone American wander around Moscow without KGB accompaniment?” I
occasionally looked behind me but there was no one in sight. Once in my hotel
room, I wondered if there was a microphone hidden in the wall or behind a
painting.

What I discovered that first night in Moscow last year was
that my head was an attic stuffed with vivid Cold War imagery. The attic is by
no means empty a year later, but this time there were fewer glances backward.

Red Square was glistening beautifully in the rain. St.
Basil’s Cathedral stood in a flood of light at the far end of the vast space,
Lenin’s tomb midway down the Kremlin wall on the right, the GUM department
store on the left, the red-brick History Museum in back of me. The cobblestone
surface is dark as sea water at night but, wet, is full of light. This is
really one of the most impressive public squares in the world. Judging from old
paintings and photos, it has changed surprisingly little under revolutionary
auspices. St. Basil’s Cathedral is Red Square’s exclamation point. Lenin’s Tomb
is austere and understated, not in competition with St. Basil’s. How funny that
a church has become the symbol of a “godless” state.

October
20: Tanya, freed from her desk for most of
my stay, asked what I would especially like to do and see in Moscow. We spoke
about various church services. There is a monastery near her office where there
are services morning and evening. There is also the Tretyakov Gallery, which I
have long been hoping to see. I would love to have an un-hurried look at the
churches inside the Kremlin which I hurried through during a meeting
intermission last year.

We started with the Kremlin cathedrals.

Russian churches are so different in spirit than churches
in western Europe. They seem playful, like water colors for a child’s book.
What could be more fanciful than a crop of upside-down onions growing into the
sky? Some of the cupolas are shining gold, some dull green, others dark blue with
gold stars. Most amazing are the multi-colored cupolas of St. Basil’s.

“The architects tried to suggest candle flames by the
cupola shape,” said Tanya, “but people always think of onions.” She reminded me
of the story Dostoyevsky tells in The Brothers Karamazov of a
self-centered woman almost saved from hell by an onion. “‘But she wasn’t
entirely selfish,’ an angel reminded God. ‘Remember, she once gave an onion to
a hungry beggar.’ ‘Yes, that’s true,’ God said. ‘I bless you to use that onion
to lift her out of hell.’ The angel took the onion and found the stingy woman.
She grabbed hold of the onion and was being lifting up, but those standing near
her wanted to come with her and hung on to her legs. The woman wanted heaven
only for herself, so she kicked the others away. ‘Just me,’ she screamed, ‘just
me!’ As she said these words her hands slipped from the onion and she fell back
into hell.”

For many years my greatest love among churches was
Chartres, the thirteenth century gothic cathedral in the countryside southwest
of Paris. It is what a monk I know calls a “thin place.” For all its stone,
Chartres has a kind of transparency. Its wordless celebration of the existence
of God is a never-ending wonder. It isn’t simply the architecture or the
windows or the carving. The building seems soaked with the confessions, the
prayers, the hopes and loves of all those it has drawn into itself since its
walls began to rise.

More recently, especially in these years since moving to
Europe, Romanesque churches centuries older than Chartres have endeared
themselves to me. While not nearly so majestic and mysterious as the great
gothic churches, they imply a more maternal God, a God of gentle touches, a God
who can be relied on completely, a God as solid as a Roman arch.

There is in Russian churches neither the heaven-climbing
ambition of gothic architecture nor the solemnization of gravity offered by Romanesque
tradition. These Russian churches are an invitation not only to believe and to
pray but to experience the mystical life.

Among the four Kremlin churches that we visited, the one
that most impressed me today was the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael. Many
of the czars are buried here, including Ivan the Terrible. It is a church that
links itself to the Last Judgment, as one sees from the fresco over the door.
Inside, everything is icons but the floor. There is very little gold,
surprisingly when you think how much gold and silver ended up in Russian
churches. The colors are subdued earth shades: dark green, an orange like the
dried peel of a tangerine, a creamy ivory white. I noticed scenes of Creation,
Eden, the Fall, and the Resurrection of the Dead. Overhead was a huge icon of
Christ enthroned, orange-red triangles and half circles surrounding him, a
blast of energy and yet utter calm, motion and perfect stillness.

The iconostasis in a Russian Church is an iconed wall with
several doors. The Royal Doors are in the center and beyond them the altar. I
used to think of the iconostasis as an unfortunate border drawn between priests
and lay people but now I realize it is the place in the church for the main
icons, which, if you understand icons as an encouragement to pray, may be the
best place to put them.

The artists who made icons were trying to paint openings
into eternity. Even in museum churches, they still inspire prayer, as I could
see in some of the faces of visitors I saw today. One young woman stood before
an icon of Mary and Jesus and crossed herself. On the other hand, there are
those quite disconnected from icons, who see in them simply works of historic
significance, primitive steps along the path to modern painting. I noticed one
visitor, using the glass over an icon as a mirror, tidying her hair.

In the evening, Tanya brought me to a yellow-brick building
housing the Publishing Department of the Moscow Patriarchate. One flight up is
the office of Archbishop Pitirim, a large room with a cluttered desk at one end
and a tidy reception area at the other, a long conference table in the middle,
windows filling one wall, books and icons on the facing wall.

Archbishop Pitirim has a face as warm as a fireplace. He
has a long grey beard and long hair on his head: the traditional Orthodox
acceptance of hair as a gift from God. His eyebrows are thick and dark, almost
black. He has large, welcoming eyes, the eyes of a story teller.

“We Christians have the obligation to overcome, even
liquidate, the image of the enemy,” he said. “The only real enemies we have are
sin and death. As Billy Graham said when he was in Moscow, all people in the
world together face a common enemy, not each other but war itself. Such an
enemy as war comes from our enemy images. The subject of enemies must be
considered theologically rather than politically.”

In addition to his responsibility for the Church’s
publishing work, Archbishop Pitirim teaches a course on the New Testament at
the Moscow Theological Academy. We spoke about the church at the time when the
New Testament was written: “The early Christians did not search for the enemy
in others,” he said, “but in themselves. Inspired by the scriptures, they
patiently turned to the transformation of themselves. In this way they
transformed their world. This is the kind of moral development needed today if
we are to overcome enmity. We must begin with the transformation of ourselves
rather than someone else. And we must search for what is good in whoever is
called ‘an enemy.’”

On the way back to the hotel, travelling alone, I had a
nice encounter with strangers in the Metro. Two students helped me find the
right platform, then asked me if I like the poetry of Robert Burns. We ended up
singing “Auld Lang Syne.”

October
21: After breakfast Tanya took me to the
Tretyakov Gallery. I had never heard of it until my first visit to Moscow and
then only just before leaving.

Several of the most sublime icons in the world are in the
Tretyakov, including Our Lady of Vladimir, Rublev’s Holy Trinity, Rublev’s icon
of the Savior, and a crucifixion by Dionysius.

Icons such as Our Lady of Vladimir are distinguished from other
icon types by a Russian word meaning “tender loving.” This is because Jesus and
Mary aren’t presented in stiff royal poses but with their faces pressed gently
together. The icon of Our Lady of Vladimir has been in Russia since 1155, when
it was brought from Constantinople to Kiev and then to Suzdal. In 1161 it was
taken to Vladimir, after which its name is taken. “Chronicles record every time
it was moved from one place to another,” writes Vladimir Lossky, “and explain
by its influence every important event in Russian history…[it] is venerated
as the greatest holy treasure of the nation.”x[photo of the icon]

Though judged by art historians as having been painted in
Constantinople in the eleventh or twelfth century, the icon is regarded by many
Orthodox believers as the work of the author of the third Gospel, St. Luke. The
tradition is understandable. One can easily imagine this is Mary. She
gazes out from the battered surface of the icon with deep love and concern,
while her head is tilted toward the child in her arms. It is a painting of
every mother and child, and yet unmistakably this is the Mother of God, and in
her arms is the Lord of Life. The anxiety in Mary’s face anticipates the
crucifixion. It also suggests every parent’s apprehension for their children’s
lives. But the Christ child’s face is free of worry. One of his hands is around
her neck, the other resting just beneath her shoulder. In expression and touch
he offers silent, motionless reassurance.

Andrei Rublev painted the Holy Trinity icon in the
mid-1420s. It was intended as the principal icon of the Holy Trinity Lavra, to
be placed to the right of the Holy Doors in the iconostasis of the Holy Trinity
Cathedral. Three golden-winged figures sit in gold thrones around a table, the
altar. At the center of the altar is a gold chalice holding a burnt offering.
In the background are a house, a tree and a mountain. The image is familiar to
me. Henri Nouwen gave us an excellent reproduction of it as a wedding gift and
it hangs over the fireplace in our living room. I was unprepared, however, at
how much depth and light there is in the actual icon, how transparent it is,
and how big, at least a yard wide.

The angelic figures are the three strangers that appeared
to Abraham at Mamre: “And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he
sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day.”xi In
Genesis the three are recognized as Lord and described both in the singular and
plural. Sarah made bread for them while Abraham had a calf slaughtered for
their meal. She laughed at their assurance that she would have a child: “After
I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?”xii In the
Rublev icon, neither Abraham or Sarah are visible. Rublev’s attention is not on
the details of the story but only on the three strangers, in whom Orthodox
believers recognize the Trinity.

The outer edge of the three figures forms a perfect circle.
Within the circle a triangle is suggested. But neither shape is stressed. What
you see first are three young faces inclined toward each other. The faces are
not patriarchal. Rather they look like three identical sisters. They three are
so engaged with each other that there is an overwhelming oneness in them. There
is no argument, there is nothing aggressive. No one dominates. They are united
in silent, intimate dialogue. One is drawn into their silence, and into the
love it contains. There are no words for this. You are invited to be present in
their love, to be forgiven and healed in this love, to be are saved in this
love.

At the center of their love is sacrifice: the burnt
offering in the chalice. The tree in the background suggests the wood on which
Christ was crucified. The barren mountain is a reminder both of the Mount of
Temptation and the Mount of Transfiguration. The house, as Henri Nouwen has
written, is “the house of mercy, the house of perfect love, the house of God.”xiii The door
is open. All can enter. Everyone is invited.

In Rublev’s icon called the Savior of Zvenigorod, also
known as “the Peacemaker,” one is face to face with Jesus, as if a door had
been opened and he was suddenly standing there. His eyes are kind but
romanticize nothing. His face seems to contain the whole gospel. Looking at it
one can experience both judgment and forgiveness, authority and mercy. No
single word and quality of Jesus dominates. Such stillness! It is a miracle
that this image has survived. A year after the Revolution of 1917, it was found
in a barn.

The Dionysius icon of the crucifixion dates from 1500 and
probably is connected to the biblical verse, “Woman, behold, your son!”xiv Four
women, with Mary in the center, stand to one side, on the other the disciple
John, to whom Jesus commended his mother, and a soldier. In the air around
Christ are angels. It isn’t a bloody scene. Christ seems weightless, calm and
gentle. His inclined face resembles the faces in Rublev’s Holy Trinity icon.
Jesus’ gaze is toward his mother. Despite the distance, the faces of Jesus and
Mary seem to touch as they do in the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. Even while
dying, Jesus offers his mother reassurance. The heads of Jesus, Mary and John
are the corners of a triangle, another suggestion of the Trinity.

After a long stay with the icons, we concentrated on work
by the Itinerants, a school of Russian artists active in the late 1800s and
early 1900s. Their style is quite realistic and direct. The canvases say a
great deal about what brought on the Revolution. Often we see how desperate
life was for the poor a hundred years ago. There are also damning glimpses of
the rich. Occasionally the artists concentrate on the comfort and self-absorption
of clerics, yet many of these artists are trying to affirm the gospels. In
these cases their work is sometimes a kind of modern iconography.

In Nicholas Ghe’s painting (done in 1890) of Christ before
Pilate, Pilate is asking, “What is truth?” Christ stands before Pilate wearing
the dark red robe the soldiers put on him as a crude joke. His hands are bound
behind him. Still and silent as an icon, he stands gazing at Pilate. Young,
fearless, with disheveled hair, he looks like a revolutionary. The face has
much in common with icons of Christ Pantocrator: Jesus shown as the Lord and
Judge of Life. In the same room is Ghe’s “Golgotha,” painted in 1893. An
accusing arm points at Christ from the left. Perhaps it is a soldier ordering
Jesus to take off his robe. The face of Christ is full of anguish and grief. He
looks very Jewish. His eyes are closed, his hands at the sides of his face, the
fingers pulling back the skin of his forehead. At his side are the two other
condemned men, one of whom has an expression of murderous rage, while the other
has a sorrowful calm about him.

I left the Tretyakov Gallery aware that it is one of
Moscow’s living churches.

In the afternoon I had a daytime look at Red Square. There
were many thousands there but the space is so vast that it didn’t seem crowded.
The vivid colors of the cupolas of St. Basil’s kept anchoring my eyes. The flow
of newly married couples to Lenin’s Tomb (they are exempted from having to wait
in line) is nearly constant on Saturdays. Afterward the couples leave flowers
at the eternal flame for the unknown soldier on the Kremlin’s north wall.

“The wedding gowns are all handmade,” Tanya said, “often
the work of the brides or their mothers, otherwise the work of friends.” I
watched one couple walking dreamily together, oblivious to the parade of
relatives and friends behind them.

Nearly everyone on the Square is Russian or at least
Russian speaking, though often one hears a quite unfamiliar language or sees
strikingly Asiatic faces. Many people and groups pose for pictures with St.
Basil’s behind them. Near Lenin’s tomb, people are hushed, the atmosphere
church-like. But on the rest of the square it is like a country fair: laughter,
ice cream, children riding on the shoulders of their fathers.

Sunday,
October 22: The high point of the day may
well be the high point of all these days in Russia: simply being present for
the Liturgy this morning in the Epiphany Cathedral.

Epiphany Cathedral isn’t an old church. The place is
drenched in gold, as if King Midas went on a rampage and happened to be here
when it happened. The icons, of the western-influenced style of the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, are not to my taste. And yet being in this throng of
worshippers was a more exciting experience than I have had in far more
beautiful churches. In fact the place became beautiful for me simply because it
was such a grace to be there.

The principle celebrant of the Liturgy was Patriarch Pimen,
head of the Russian Orthodox Church. He is old and frail. Like all Orthodox
bishops, he is a monk. His is a quiet and compassionate face, a face that has
known suffering, perhaps knows suffering now. It is rumored he was a prisoner
in the 1930s. [photo of Pimen]

It’s a very large church, one of 47 “working” churches in
Moscow, and was crowded as a church in the west would be on a major feast day.
“But on a major feast,” Tanya said, “you would have to come many hours early
just to get inside.” As in all Orthodox churches, believers pray standing up.
For the non-initiated, this can be painful, as the liturgy runs about three
hours. “The first hour, you think of how difficult it is to stand,” Archbishop
Pitirim told me. “The second hour you think of nothing at all. And the third
hour you have wings.”

It is active prayer. Some cross themselves and then bow
slightly every few minutes, others cross themselves almost continually. I
thought of the patterns the wind makes blowing across a field of wheat as I
watched the rippling of bowing heads in the tightly packed congregation.

All the while the most beautiful singing was going on,
mainly from two choirs facing each other in balconies on either side of the
church. For some sections of the Liturgy, the congregation joined with the
choirs, singing with great force.

While the congregation prayed, a steady flow of objects was
passed forward hand-to-hand: folded bits of paper containing requests for
prayer; candles directed particular icons; flowers; and a loaf of bread wrapped
in paper. All these were accepted by two nuns who stood near the iconostasis.

The nuns wore black habits with circular hats and simple
veils. One looked quite severe, the other had a face warm as a muffin. The
muffin nun kept busy taking out the stumps of burned out candles and putting in
new ones.

At first I stood like a wooden statue. I wanted to do what
those around me were doing, not simply to fit in but because the body language
of prayer seemed just the thing to do in a church, so much more interesting
than simply standing there. But I felt awkward and ridiculous. I had my hands
behind my back, like someone looking at paintings in a museum. Tanya whispered,
“Let your hands hang at your side!” Soon enough I was doing my best to pray in
the Russian style. (A Swedish friend, Margareta Ingelstam, belonging to a
non-demonstrative reformed church, had the experience of being lectured in
Russian by a babushka who wouldn’t rest until Margareta crossed herself and
bowed. It seemed the old woman was saying to her, “This isn’t the zoo and we
aren’t on exhibition. Do what we are doing or go away!”)

I found myself alternating between praying and watching
those around me. Many of my neighbors were babushkas, the older Russian women
with shawls or knitted hats whose faces reveal indomitable souls. But there
many were younger women, men of all ages, and quite a sprinkling of children.
The babushkas were certainly the majority, but they had a lot of company.
Seeing how many young people there were, I could understand the anxieties
which, a few days ago, prompted Pravda to call for higher quality
atheist propaganda in order to counter the growth of religious belief among the
young.

What cannot be described is the tangible quality of the
prayer in the church. I felt that if the walls and pillars of the church were
taken away, the roof would rest securely on the faith of the congregation
below. I have very rarely experienced this kind of intense spiritual presence.
Was it always so in Russia? It must have been solid faith indeed to have
survived many hard years and martyrdoms.

On the way out of the cathedral, we found ourselves in a
crowd of families waiting to have their children baptized. A few months ago a
pastor from Leningrad whom I met at a meeting in London estimated that the
number of practicing members of the Orthodox Church in Russia had grown by
ten-million in the past decade. He isn’t a tall man. “But,” he said, “short as
I am, when it was just me and the babushkas, I was a tree among shrubs. But now
I am just one more bush. The young people are the trees.”

In the evening, I walked down Kalinin Prospekt, stopped for
a while in a large record shop, gazed through various other shop windows,
walked around the Kremlin walls, and finally rode the Metro, stopping at
various stations as I did last year. The Metro still surprises me with the wide
variety of styles. One station, Park Kulturi, has bas-reliefs of dancers,
skaters, acrobats, all without a trace of political content. Komsomolskaya
station, on the other hand, is intensely political. Its mosaics celebrate
revolution, including America’s. There is a large mosaic of George Washington
on horseback that would fit right into any public building in Washington, D.C.

October
23: I talked about Soviet films and film
makers with Victoria Reuter, a young translator on the staff of the Soviet
Peace Committee. Though she is working for a secular organization, I noticed
that she wears a small gold cross around her neck. She was surprised that I had
seen “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” and didn’t know it had received an
Oscar. “I have the impression,” she said, “that films from our country aren’t
shown in the United States. But American films are very popular here. My
favorites are ‘Kramer vs Kramer’ and ‘Tootsie.’ These were real hits in
Moscow.” Vicky, a great fan of Barbra Streisand, was envious that I had seen
“Yentl,” which hasn’t been imported to the Soviet Union. I promised to send her
a tape of the music.

A recent Soviet film that Vicky recommended is “Life and
Tears and Love,” about an old-age home. “The residents are waiting to die,”
Vicky said, “and in a way they are already dead. They are letting the dust
settle on them. Then a new doctor joins the staff and is so alive, so
interested in them, that she lifts them out of their passivity and depression
and brings them back to life. It’s a kind of resurrection story.”

Another recent film she found quite special was “The
Scarecrow.” “The word can also mean `The Gargoyle,’” she explained. “There is a
fantastic girl in it, 11 or 12, a future Juliet. It’s about children and misunderstanding
and how cruel children can be to their friends.”

In the evening I went to a Moscow theater for children
where a production of “The Humpbacked Pony” was being staged. Fine dancing and
stunning sets. The humpbacked pony has the gift of flight. In one scene the
pony and his rider fly across a stage covered with clouds broken only by church
cupolas that dance around them.

October
24: Vicky mentioned a singer whose voice
and style have given her a national reputation for being a Russian Joan Baez: Jeanne
Bichevskaya. “Do you think Joan Baez would ever come to sing in the Soviet
Union? I know she is very critical of our country.” Vicky has been the road
manager for a number of western musicians travelling in the Soviet Union,
including Harry Belafonte, but she found it too hard living so much of the year
out of a suitcase.

At an afternoon meeting with the Religious Circles
Commission of the Soviet Peace Committee Nina Bobrova, director of the Women’s
Division of the External Church Affairs Department, spoke about the growing
emphasis on peace in preaching in Russian churches.

“Sermons today include not only an explanation of the day’s
Bible text,” she said, “but there is a definite emphasis on peacemaking. It is
something that pastors think about. This is similar to what we see happening in
churches in other parts of the world. When you visit our churches, you
experience this, and the hospitality people give in their homes and churches in
their hope and striving for peace. I see this happening in the United States as
well. Things have changed a lot in both countries in the last few years! Four
years ago I was a guest of Church Women United in the United States, and I
remember there were people shocked to have a Soviet woman present at their
meeting. They were actually very suspicious. Just who was I really speaking
for? Maybe the KGB! Now when I go there it is entirely different.”

And yet, she said, there are many things which haven’t
changed, even in the churches where there is much talk about peace and where
guests from the Soviet Union are welcome. “I still find people in American
churches speaking of Russians as ‘the enemy.’ We in the Soviet Union must be
loved, they say, because Jesus said, ‘Love your enemy.’ This word ‘enemy’ has
connotations of hatred and opposition and means that in fact we threaten
America. When we say ‘friendship,’ this has entirely different connotations.
For us it would be truer to say, ‘Love thy friend!’ Here ordinary people,
strange as it may sound to you, do not regard Americans as their enemy.”

Another participant in the meeting, Archdeacon Vladimir
Nazarkin, suggested that we need to look more at the dark side of Christian
history. “Christ means peace. The Gospel is a message of peace. But we have to
ask ourselves why this message has been so often ignored. Why has fascism
emerged from Christian countries? Christians have played a big part in war,
even talked about holy wars. We have often committed the sin of division. Now
believers begin to understand that our faith leads us to overcome such
division, but steps taken by Christians in the Soviet Union are often regarded
by Christians in the west only as propaganda actions.”

Diana Francis [President of the International Fellowship of
Reconciliation, who had come to Moscow for these meetings with the Soviet Peace
Committee] responded with a comment about the problem of patriotism in her own
country. “It would not be charitable to say a British bishop consciously puts
allegiance to Queen and country before allegiance to the Gospel. In fact we see
all too often how patriotism takes priority over the Gospel. Yet there are
examples of it not happening, as when the church service in St. Paul’s
Cathedral in London after the Falklands war was made a service of repentance
rather than of celebration.”

Tomorrow we drive northeast of Moscow to Zagorsk, regarded
as the living center of the Russian Orthodox Church.

October
25: The Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra!
After an hour’s drive through woods and villages, our small IFOR group walked
through a wide gate in the monastery’s fortress walls, entering an enclave of
monastic churches which has been the heart of Russian Orthodoxy for centuries.
In ancient times this land was heavily forested. In 1354 St. Sergius of Radonez
and his small community of fellow monks made a clearing where they built a
church. A biographer in the next generation wrote, “St. Sergius built the
Church of the Holy Trinity as a mirror for his community, that through gazing
at the Unity, they might overcome the hateful divisions of this world.” In
1422, 24 years after his death, a cathedral church dedicated to the Holy
Trinity was built and Rublev’s icon of the Trinity was painted for the
iconostasis. (The original is now at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow; a
remarkably good copy stands in its place.)

Every morning of the year, monks begin a service of prayer
here, but pilgrims soon start to arrive and before long they take over the
service, which continues without interruption until nightfall. The Slavonic
chant begs the prayers of St. Sergius. It is a dark church, the only light
coming from candles clustered near several icons and especially near the tomb
of the saint.

The church and monastery were closed from 1930 until 1943,
when Stalin’s campaign against the Church ceased and many churches and
religious institutions were allowed to re-open. At that time, the seminary of
the Moscow Patriarchate, also here, re-opened, and worship resumed in the
churches as the monastic community returned.

Our guide was a monk of the community, Fr. Alepia, named
for the first icon painter, he said, though this is not his own calling.

We paused at a chapel-like structure built over a well. The
water began to flow miraculously during the lifetime of St. Sergius and the
water has been associated with healing. I drank a cupful. It tasted like melted
snow.

We went on to the seminary, a large building on the north
side of the monastery. It includes a small museum which contains a remarkable
collection of icons dating from a thousand years ago to those being painted at
Zagorsk today. “Christianity gave the world the idea that death is the lifting
of the soul into heaven,” we were told while standing before an icon of the
Resurrection. “Christians wait for the spring of their bodies. Icons show what
is eternal, the inner, sacred sense of what is happening. The icon is the
Gospels in paint.”

In the last room of the museum there were nineteenth
century paintings by the Itinerants, all of them masterpieces. What a pity
these canvases are so little known.

A painting by Vasili Surikov shows Jesus healing the eyes
of a blind beggar. The man stares in joyous astonishment at the world suddenly
unveiled while his hands are bathed in light. Fr. Alepia pointed out a woman’s
face in the shadow over the arm with which Jesus is touching the man’s head.
“It is the face of Surikov’s wife,” Fr. Alepia told us. “When she died Surikov
experienced such grief that he lost the will to paint. This was the first work
he did after her death. The face Jesus is touching is Surikov’s.” While Jesus’
hands are on Surikov, his eyes are on the viewer, as if to say, “I long to heal
your eyes also.” There is a quality of silent, timeless encounter. Surikov’s
work makes a bridge between Russian iconography and western painting.

A painting by Mikail Nesterov centers on a large icon of
the crucifixion standing in the open, with woodland and a river behind it. To
the left are common people in prayer. There are three people to the right: the
writer Gogol on his knees at the foot of the cross, and behind him Fyodor
Dostoyevsky and his wife, Anna Snitkina. In her arms is a small blue casket
containing the body of their infant child. “Dostoyevsky and Gogol,” said Fr.
Alepia, “were among the few authors of their generation who turned toward the
Orthodox faith while others went in the direction of secularism and atheism. But
their writings have had profound consequences for the spiritual life of many
people.”

Vasili Polenov shows Jesus walking the paths above the Sea
of Galilee. It is an intensely realistic portrait. Jesus, without a halo or any
indication of divinity, seems to have paused for a moment. Staff in hand, from
shadowed eyes he gazes from the painting, which has the effect of an icon.
(Polenov, who lived until 1927, was among the first to receive the title of
People’s Artist.)

A canvas by Turligin, another painter of the late
nineteenth century shows a young monk looking in alarm toward a chained door in
the stone church. “This monk is shown painting an icon during the time of the
iconoclasts,” Fr. Alepia said. “In the eighth and ninth centuries, certain
theologians in the Byzantine Empire declared that the veneration of icons was a
form of idolatry. At times this was the view of the Emperor. There were two
periods when icon painting was prohibited. To make a holy image could cost
one’s life. In the eighth century, during the bitterest period of iconoclasm,
St. John of Damascus, living at the Mar Saba Monastery in the desert near
Jerusalem, wrote his defense of Orthodox veneration of images. St. John argued
that, because the Second Person of the Holy Trinity became flesh and was
visible, he can be represented visually. It is a consequence of the
Incarnation.”

The monk’s face in the painting could belong to anyone
living through a period of repression who dreads the unexpected knock on the
door. It is striking that in the first room of this small museum there is a
model of the catacombs, and in the last room a painting recalling another
period of martyrdom. “The purpose of art,” our guide had said, “is to lead us
from what can be seen to what cannot be seen.” It also says what cannot be
said.

Archimandrite Benedict received us in his office for lunch.
We talked about the canons of iconography and what space there was within them
for individual creativity. “Rublev is an example of what an individual can do,
even within the limits and norms of icon painting. The icon presents special
problems and requirements, but these should not be suffocating. One can paint
from the Gospels in a different way, very successfully. And there are other
kinds of religious paintings — for example Surikov’s painting of Christ
opening the eyes of the blind man.”

The Seminary and Academy (the seminary’s graduate school)
have been growing. “The number of pupils has doubled in ten years. At present
there are 500 students, and a new enlargement is in preparation. Also the
seminary has 800 non-resident students taking courses by correspondence. About
90 students each year are ordained to the priesthood. Together with the
ordinations from the seminaries in Leningrad and Odessa, the Church receives
about 200 new priests each year. Believe me, with 7000 Orthodox parishes, there
is no unemployment for the clergy!” (The joke is, as one hears so often, that
there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union.)

Fr. Benedict spoke about the simplicity of the Gospel:
“Christ taught a way that is very simple. For example, he said, ‘don’t treat
another as you don’t want to be treated.’ It is not so easy to do this, but it
is a teaching that a child can understand.”

Diana responded by mentioning the rather non-childish way
of churches in their relations with political authorities. “This is not at all
a simple question” Fr. Benedict commented, “though one can see in history some
of the mistakes that churches make. At times the churches have suffered from
the sin of envy, including envying power. Whoever is possessed by envy cannot
be a peacemaker.”

“Despair can also make us fail,” Diana pointed out. “We
need to share with each other our faith and vision, the vision such as Isaiah
had of the peaceable kingdom.”

“Yes,” Fr. Benedict agreed, “we need to translate this into
a vision of our time. The words of Isaiah give courage and hope, and that’s
peace! It is peace when the wolf dwells with the lamb. It is peace if we will
translate these words into action, if we are active with these words.
Christianity shows a way to overcome the sin of division. It is a peacemaking
religion. The first century Christians did not kill. They knew that we are one
people. The highest thing is to be human. ‘The glory of God is the human person
fully alive,’ one of the Church Fathers taught. Nothing is more precious. And
what happiness it is to meet one who can give consolation in difficult times,
and who can show us how to be patient in the things we don’t like in each
other. Those who can do this are truly following the law of love. To struggle
for peace, you must start with yourself. If a person will find out and
understand that he’s wrong, we won’t be able to think of himself as better or
higher than others. Then you understand that each person is on the way to
perfection, struggling along the way, and making mistakes, but still enduring.
Whoever thinks he has made no mistakes either hasn’t done anything, or is not
sincere.”

October
26: This afternoon our little IFOR group
met with Archbishop Platon at the offices of Department for External Church
Affairs, a low wooden building of the sort that has largely been destroyed in
the modernization of Moscow.

The most animated moment with him was occasioned by a
question about the large painting that hangs at one end of the conference room
where he received us. In it a hostile figure in gold robes, but with a dark
outer cloak, is regarding a bishop with rage. The bishop stands with great calm,
looking up as if he were considering an icon on the church wall. Between these
two figures is a third, a flunkey type, appealing to the bishop with a gesture
that seems to say, “Take care! Say yes! Your life depends on it!”

“The man in gold,” said Archbishop Platon, “is Ivan the
Terrible. The bishop is Metropolitan Philip of Moscow. Ivan entered the church
under cover of a monk’s cloak to demand that the Metropolitan cease speaking
out against the czar’s policies. The Metropolitan refused. Later Ivan had him
arrested and finally the czar had Philip strangled in his prison cell. Philip
is one of the saints of our church.”xv

An
interesting painting for any church leader anywhere in the world to consider.
Last year I sat in meetings in this same room for four days, occasionally
looking at this painting yet giving it little thought. It has taken time to
discover how much the Orthodox say through images rather than words.

October
27: I was able to stop in for another an evening
visit with Archbishop Pitirim. He mentioned the class he had just met with at
the seminary in Zagorsk.

“We were discussing the Kingdom of Heaven. I asked what
does the Gospel say about the Kingdom of Heaven? They told me that Christ came
to earth to invite everyone to heaven. His method was first to do miracles and
only then to explain why he did them. But modern humanity is tired of
explanations — they are not enough. I asked the students what they will do as
priests. They gave various answers, none of which I found very interesting. The
answer should be, I said, ‘I will do miracles. But what kind of miracles? The
miracle of change! The miracle of changing our habits. The miracle of changing
ourselves. We need to be changed in such a way that people can come to God
through us. The great miracle is to change ourselves and to show in our own
lives that the heaven of God is real.’”

October
28: Having arrived at the gate to the
Novodevichy Monastery a little early, Tanya and I walked down the hillside along
a path by the monastery walls to a riverside park. We watched a father and his
daughter feed swans, one white swan, one black. Mothers pushed small children
in strollers, stopping to talk with each other. The park is a popular place for
runners. Groups of them regularly came down the path by the monastery wall,
waving their arms as if they hoped to take wing at the water’s edge, then going
around the corner of the monastery walls, stopping to do some exercises while
standing in a circle. If I lived in Moscow, this park would draw me often.

We were joined at the monastery gate by Tatiana Volgina, a
member of Archbishop Pitirim’s staff who is involved with English-language
publications. She introduced us to Olga Kurbatova, a historian who for eighteen
years has been working at the Novodevichy Monastery. Olga is large,
round-faced, with lively eyes, her hair pulled back in a bun. She possesses an
immense, contagious enthusiasm that pours out in animated talk and frequent
laughter. It was love at first sight. What a privilege it would be to see all
of Russia in Olga’s company. I am far from her only admirer. Archbishop Pitirim
calls her Sister Barbara because of her discovery of an ancient icon of St.
Barbara under the paint of a more recent one.

The monastery was built in 1524 to house a particular icon
that came to Russia from Byzantium. This was the Smolensk Mother of God, so
named because it was in the Cathedral of Smolensk until it came to Moscow at
the time of the union of Moscow and Smolensk. The icon’s history is painted on
the wall of the main church but the original icon is no longer here.

The monastery is similar to Zagorsk though on a smaller
scale. In one of its churches, worshippers gather twice daily. There is no
longer a monastic community here but the residence and offices of Metropolitan
Yuvenali, vicar of the diocese of Moscow under the Patriarch.

In czarist times Novodevichy was mainly for women from
noble families. “For example,” Olga explained, “when a noble woman was widowed,
it would be a disgrace either to remarry or to continue living in the civil
world, so she would come here. Of course unmarried girls came also. Whoever
came brought all their valuables so it became very rich in lands and was
magnificently decorated. When the Patriarch of Antioch visited, he declared
that he had not seen another monastery so rich or noble as this one. The best
artists of the time, in the Moscow region, worked here. It was here that Boris
Gudounov was made czar. If you see the opera, ‘Boris Gudounov,’ the first scene
is here.”

The monastery figures in the rise of Peter the Great and
the decline of his sister Sophia, who had been regent ten years, until Peter
was seventeen and ordered her into the Novodevichy. Outside these walls Peter
had scaffolds erected and executed some of the streltsy, Kremlin guards
who had turned against Peter and whom he suspected wanted to put Sophia in
power.

“In the hands of one of those who were hung,” Olga said, “a
charter was placed appealing to Sophia to return to the throne. Peter was good
at practical jokes, but often rather grim ones. Some years later, when Peter’s
second wife was the object of too much attention from someone in the court,
Peter had the man beheaded in Red Square, with his wife as a witness. Soon
afterward she found the man’s head in pickling solution in a jar on a table in
her bedroom.”

Olga pointed out how those who built the monastery
organized the main work within a pattern that follows the lines of the cross,
in the process abandoning some earlier traditions. “In Sophia’s time, many
artists and stone masons worked here. New walls were made in the Moscow baroque
style, buildings of red and white stone. There were private chambers built for
the czar’s use when he came to visit, and a private chapel, which you see over
the main gate, and which is a living church again. The architects of the
seventeenth century, confronted with difficult tasks here, created something
new within these walls, making it one of the glories of Russia.”

We spent some time in the Cathedral of the Assumption, a
“summer church” with five cupolas now in the midst of restoration, then went to
the smaller church still used for daily services. It is called a “winter
church” because, with its low ceiling and absence of cupolas, it can be kept
warm in cold weather. Then we went on to the large cemetery where many notable
Muscovites are buried: writers, artists, actors, dancers, musicians, war
heroes, generals and admirals, an astronaut, and one former General Secretary
of the Communist Party.

Olga pointed out a low stone bench where Stalin used to sit
before the grave of his wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, who had opposed his brutal
policies until her suicide in 1932. Standing before another grave, where Nikita
Khrushchev is buried, Olga mentioned that the sculptor who had designed the
monument had gone into exile. “How he survives in exile I cannot imagine,” she
said. “For me, I count the days whenever I am away from Moscow, even though I
am still in Russia. I cannot think of a worse fate than not being able to live
here.”

Before we left the cemetery, Olga told a joke about a man
who more than anything wanted to be buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery. Finally
he found a high official who said he would try and do something to help. The
next day the official called back. “Yuri, you’re in luck! There is a place for
you, but you must hurry. Your grave is available tomorrow only.”

February, 1987

The agreement made with Archbishop Pitirim in 1984 nearly
died on the vine. It took longer than I imagined to find publishers in the US
and Britain who would commit themselves to the project, a pre-condition from my
side. In the spring of 1985, I was away in Jerusalem for three months, a
sabbatical leave which I spent studying Russian history and Orthodoxy and leading
a seminar on peacemaking at the Institute for Ecumenical Research at Tantur,
near Jerusalem. In the spring of 1986, Crossroad/Continuum in the US and
Marshall Pickering in Britain agreed to publish the book, but I heard nothing
from Moscow about when I might return.

Then in October 1986, while in Copenhagen for a World Peace
Congress, I met Metropolitan Yuvenali, vicar of the Moscow diocese of the
Russian Orthodox Church. He and I had been asked to give the opening speeches
to the Congress’ religious section. We talked at some length between sessions.
I mentioned my book project and asked if he could help push things along.
Before parting we exchanged rosaries, in his case one of black silk that had
come from Jerusalem, in my own case a rosary that had been given to me by Pope
John Paul II. Two months later I received an invitation from him to take part
in the religious section of a Peace Forum to be held in Moscow in February.
After the Forum, he said, further travel within the USSR would be possible.

Moscow,
February 12, 1987: I’m staying in the
Mezhdunarodnaya, an un-American name for an otherwise very American hotel,
designed by an American architect, fitted with American Standard plumbing, and
with glass-walled American Otis elevators that offer a dramatic view of a
cavernous gardened lobby. The idea was to make foreign businessmen feel at home
in Moscow. The Mezhdunarodnaya — it means international — is part of a
complex of modern conference and convention buildings. The Russian Orthodox
Church normally puts up its guests in the Hotel Ukraina across the river, a
cheaper place with an old-shoes feeling altogether lacking here, but the
religious section of the Moscow Peace Forum is to be held here.

On
the television news program tonight, there are clips of famous people arriving
for the Peace Forum: movie stars, authors, generals, scientists, and a Nobel
Prize winning doctor from America. This was followed by a recitation of the
temperatures in principal cities of the Soviet Union: 45 degrees above
zero in Tashkent, 25 degrees below zero in Murmansk. I suppose there is
no other country that records a 70-degree temperature spread at a given hour of
the day. Within the Soviet Union’s eleven times zones, it is normal. The news
was followed by a British movie, “Passage to India,” starring a
Russian-speaking Alec Guiness.

Moscow,
February 13: There are about a thousand
people in Moscow for the Peace Forum, divided up into various sections —
religious, scientific, medical, literary, artistic, business, ecological,
military. The religious and business sections of the Forum are meeting in this
hotel.

Georgi
Derevianchenko, Assistant to the Chairman the External Church Affairs
Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, has asked me how long I can stay after
the Forum and what places I would like to visit. I proposed Leningrad,
Novgorod, Pskov, Suzdal and Vladimir, with a possible return visit to the Holy
Trinity Lavra in Zagorsk. “No problem!” said Georgi. “The only thing is I have
to see who I can find to travel with you.”

This
afternoon, having waded through the snow to a bookshop on Kalinin Prospekt, I
met an economist. We have beards in common, a rarity in Moscow, though his is
more neatly trimmed than mine. He had an elegant manner and, now that I think
of it, resembled the last czar, Nicholas II. We talked about art books — I had
just bought a very handsome one reproducing paintings by Ilya Repin.

I
asked him about glasnost, wondering whether he would dare to talk
politics in the busy entrance area of a crowded shop in the middle of Moscow.
Not a blink of hesitation. He did little pantomimes of the last few Soviet
leaders prior to Gorbachev. He showed Brezhnev as a man with head tilted
heavily to one side, eyes half-closed. “Corruption prospered,” he said. “It was
worse than you can imagine. Then came Brezhnev’s successors, corpses even while
still in office, and nothing changed.” He played the part of one dead body,
then another, eyes now entirely closed. Then, springing back to life, “But
Gorbachev, now he is alive and he is a clever man. Finally we have someone who
is alive and can think.”

He
talked about the impending publication of Pasternak’s long-suppressed Dr.
Zhivago, and mentioned various films I should see, especially Repentance,
which has escaped from the censors and is showing in cinemas all over the
country, including seventeen Moscow theaters. It is the first time that
Stalin’s era has been the object of a critical movie. “Stalin simply
disappeared,” the economist said. “One day his picture was on every wall. The
next day it was gone. Until Khrushchev, nothing was said about Stalin or what
he did or how many died or where they died, and after Khrushchev, the silence
returned. Now research into the Stalin period is finally being allowed.” Our
conversation drifted on to the topic of used book shops in Moscow. We parted
company after exchanging addresses.

Moscow,
February 14: The Forum was off and running
as of this morning. Metropolitan Yuvenali is chairing the religious section.
About 200 are taking part, mainly Christians but a good many Jews, Hindus,
Buddhists, Shintoists and Moslems. Lots of journalists and photographers were
on hand for the opening session but few, if any, from the west.

After
several hours of opening speeches in the plenary session, we broke into several
smaller sections in which nothing was planned. Those chairing the meetings (in
our case Bill Thompson, a former head of the Presbyterian Church in the United
States) presided very lightly. Most of the speeches were off-the-cuff and, on the
whole, either interesting or mercifully brief.

Several
speakers touched on hot subjects, including Afghanistan, where what the USSR is
doing was compared to what America did in Vietnam. Remarkably, no Russians
stood up to say, “Wait a minute, please stop these cold war speeches. Soviet
troops are in Afghanistan because they were invited in by an ally. They are
merely defending a democratic government against counter-revolutionaries armed
and paid by the CIA.” This is a speech I have often heard. What was said by
Russians boiled down to: “It was a tragic mistake and our government is
committed to getting out. But we can’t just pack our bags and fly away.” (This
was what one heard in the US during the last part of the Vietnam war, just
before Americans packed their bags and flew away.)

One
church leader from the US spoke about religious repression in the USSR and
suggested specific changes in the Soviet Constitution. An older Russian priest
rose to ask how Americans would respond to proposals from Soviet citizens
advocating changes in the American Constitution. But he didn’t make any claims
that all was well for believers in the USSR nor did he remind us of human
rights violations in the United States.

It
is remarkable how little America-bashing there has been. The Russians stress
theological aspects of peacemaking. They seem less “political” than those
coming from the west, except that they mention disarmament initiatives the USSR
has taken and express the hope that there can be a positive response to them.

After
supper I had a long talk with a translator who is taking part in the business
section of the Peace Forum. A Muscovite, he talked about the struggle in the
city to save and restore surviving old buildings. Then we switched gears to
Russian literature, starting with Dostoyevsky and working our way to Valentin
Rasputin, a contemporary author whose stories often have a religious note and
who is well known for his struggle to protect the environment from
industrialism. Then he asked if I knew the books of Thomas Merton. It turns out
he is a great fan of Merton and has a number of Merton books in his library. He
was surprised that I had actually known Merton, but not nearly as surprised as
I was that Merton’s books can be found on Moscow bookshelves.

Moscow,
Sunday, February 15: Participants in the
religious section of the Forum went to the Danilov — St. Daniel — Monastery,
a few miles south of the Kremlin, to take part in the Holy Liturgy. A community
of 21 monks is now living there. It is the youngest monastic community in the
USSR, though residing in Moscow’s oldest monastery. When it was founded in 1282
by St. Prince Daniel, the monastery was in the countryside where it doubled as
a fortress and place of refuge in case of attack. The Church hopes to have 60
monks in residence by the time restoration work is finished in the summer of
1988.

After
the Revolution, the Danilov became an orphanage, then an institution for
juvenile delinquents, and more recently a factory. The ancient grandeur was
worn away until it became a grim, dilapidated compound with the atmosphere of a
prison. In 1983, in a surprising gesture by the state, the compound was
returned to the Russian Orthodox Church. The derelict buildings are now
experiencing a resurrection. Hundreds of tons of rubble and mud have been
carted away, hard labor mainly carried out by devout volunteers. On every side
there are signs of the work in progress, though none today, a Sunday. Cobble
stones, bricks and lumber are heaped against the walls while several buildings
are draped in scaffolding. The towering main gate has been painted a bright
raspberry pink. Two of the churches are fully restored. The abbot’s residence,
serving also as a reception center, looks like new. There is a residence for
the monks. Another completed building houses the External Church Affairs
Department of the Moscow Patriarchate.

The
Liturgy was in the Holy Trinity Cathedral, a cruciform church from the era of
Peter the Great that reflects his preference for western church design. Local
people were mostly on the far side of the church, with guests from the Forum on
the other. Chairs had been brought in for us, on the assumption that we
wouldn’t survive hours of standing. I felt odd at the thought of sitting in an
Orthodox Church and managed to escape the chairs, and so had a good vantage
point on the steps by the iconostasis for watching the vesting of Metropolitan
Filaret of Kiev, the principal celebrant.

The
singing burst on us like sudden rain shower: gospodi pomilui! Lord, have
mercy on us. It is the most often repeated prayer in Orthodox worship.

I
remember Thomas Merton sitting on the porch steps of his hermitage at the Abbey
of Gethsemani in Kentucky in 1962 and explaining that the mass is a kind of
dance. Were he here, perhaps he would agree that in the Orthodox Church the
mass is a ballet. I felt as if I had a box seat at the Bolshoi. Two deacons on
either side of Metropolitan Filaret assisted him in the slow, graceful layering
of his body with special garments. Each item was individually blessed, each was
put on slowly, with the utmost gravity and grace. It was like watching a
surgeon being prepared for open-heart surgery. Every motion seemed essential.
This multitude of preparatory actions, a slow-motion avalanche of little
symbols, forms a kind of visual litany drawing one into sacred space. They also
suggest that even the most minor action, the most hidden gesture, can be a
moment of standing in God’s presence.

A
family was directly across from me on the far side of the iconostasis. I was
enchanted by two young sisters, perhaps five and seven years old, and their
young brother, about four. The boy was sitting on the floor, back resting
against the iconostasis, sucking his thumb, very cheerful, paying occasional
attention to what was going on. The girls were deeply absorbed in the Liturgy,
watching everything, crossing themselves solemnly, without a trace of
self-consciousness. At times the younger girl leaned back against her older
sister, who in turn had her arms around the younger one. At other times they
were holding hands.

A
short distance away I noticed a lean man about my age, also bearded, with his
wife and their son, about nine years old. The intelligence in the boy’s face
and his attitude of deep devotion were impressive. He often rested against his
father.

All
the while the singing fell on us as if we were standing under a waterfall.

There
is a Russian phrase — bytovoe blagochestie — which means “the art of
ritual living.”xvi This has to do with both rituals and images rooted in the
center of life, community life and private life. To grow more at ease in the
art of ritual living is really to discover the possibility of living every
moment aware that one really is a Temple of the Holy Spirit, a “bearer of the
Divine image,” as the Orthodox put it so often.

I
thought of the art of ritual living late yesterday afternoon when I paused to
visit a church on a busy Moscow street. Some of the people walking by paused,
bowed, crossed themselves, at home with the gestures, though a Metro station
was just in back of them and many others streamed by without a glance at the
church. There seemed to be no embarrassment, and no sense of display either, in
those whose religious belief is obviously at the heart of their lives. In fact
I am the sort of person who would like to use these gestures, and here I can do
so without anyone paying any attention, but I hardly dare to do the same in
Amsterdam or New York, or even Rome.

Coming
out of the church after the Liturgy at the Danilov Monastery, I found a crowd
of people waiting for a smaller monastery church to open its doors. Bells were
being rung. A light snow was falling.

I
happened to be standing along the path of Patriarch Pimen at lunchtime. He has
aged since I last saw him two years ago. Now he has difficulty walking. Even
with two people helping him as he came into the restaurant and walked to his
place at the table, it was slow going and obviously painful, yet his lively
eyes were darting around with great attention, not missing a thing. Once we
were seated, he gave a speech that was quite brisk.

Participants
in the religious section of the Forum met in the late afternoon to hear the
draft text of a proposed common statement. It was the work of a committee that
included Dwain Epps, a tall, strapping American employed on the staff of the
National Council of Churches in New York City. The committee managed to catch
the spirit of the meeting, neither accusing nor praising but concentrating on
positive steps to be taken. “People of religion have special roles to play,
among them: promoting unity among the peoples; increasing contacts across lines
of division; improving the spiritual and devotional life of human communities;
helping to eliminate prejudiced enemy images; and intensifying education for
peace.”

Added
to these few points for religious believers was an appeal to leaders of the
nuclear states calling for them to renounce nuclear deterrence, respect the
existing Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (thus not to militarize space), and
proceed to conclude new treaties that are concrete steps toward a nuclear-free
world. It was a simple text, but not lacking in a sense of urgency: “We appeal
to all to commit themselves unalterably to the task of building the basis for
common security today. The time has come for us to ask the ancient questions:
If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Moscow,
February 16: The final gathering brought
all the Forum participants together for a plenary meeting at the Kremlin. Our
first stop was the Palace of Facets in the most ancient part of the Kremlin, a
large hall decorated with Biblical scenes of the creation of the world —
suitable images for a meeting preoccupied with threats to creation. This was
once the czar’s throne room. After an hour of informal conversation, we were
ushered into the Supreme Soviet.

There
was nothing hierarchical about seating arrangements. More than half-way back in
the hall, I found myself sitting directly in front of a member of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party, Georgi Arbatov, director of the Institute for
US-Canada Studies. Over to the side I noticed Kris Kristofferson, star of the
American television series, “Amerika,” a film dramatizing a Russian take-over
of the United States. He looked rather sheepish. Not many rows in front of us
was Andrei Sakharov, about whom the press gathered as if he were Marilyn Monroe
risen from the dead, and truly it was startling that a man so long kept in
internal exile was now an honored guest in the Kremlin. Sitting at a podium in
the front of the hall were representatives from each section of the Forum, plus
Gorbachev.

One
highlight of this final session was a speech by Graham Greene, representing the
writers’ section. He apologized that he would be speaking just for himself but,
he commented, “no writer can possibly represent more than one writer.” Then he
explained, without ever mentioning his last novel, what Monsignor Quixote
was all about: religious people opening their ears to Marxists about a just
social order, and Marxists discovering that God not only exists but is far more
radical than they are. Greene said that the East-West conflict pre-dates the
Bolshevik Revolutions of 1917, having its roots in “a certain suspicion, an
enmity even, between the Roman Catholic Church and Communism.” (“And long
before the Communists, the Catholics hated the Orthodox,” the Russian sitting
next to me whispered.) Greene thought that in Latin America, “except among a
few Catholics nearly as old as I am,” this enmity is being broken down as
Marxists and Christians make common cause in attempting to build a more just
social order. “The dream I have is that this cooperation between Catholics and
Communists will spread and prolong itself in Europe, East and West.” It was his
prayer, he said, despite his advanced years, to live long enough to see “a
Soviet ambassador giving good advice at the Vatican.”

General
Michael Harbottle from Britain spoke, as did Dr. Bernard Lown of Harvard, one
of the initiators of Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Paulos Mar
Gregorios from India, a president of the World Council of Churches, spoke on
behalf of the religious section of the Forum. There was an Italian businessman,
a political scientist, an ecologist. The speeches, all broadcast live on Soviet
television and rebroadcast in the evening, were quite good.

Gorbachev
came last and gave a major address. He argued that the fact that we have
survived forty years with nuclear weapons is a not something to bank on
forever. We are the lucky survivors of many war-risking games of chance.
Nuclear deterrence, he said, as “a policy based on intimidation and threat,
must always be backed up with definite action, and thus actually increases the
chances of military conflict.” If we continue in the direction we are going,
living in a constant state of high alert with enormous stocks of such weapons,
then “catastrophe is highly likely….eventually we will terminate our own
existence, and there will be no second Noahs.”

He
didn’t agree with those who argue that war is part of human nature. “Many say
so. If so we are doomed. I cannot accept such a dogma.” His basic message was
that the responsibility is in our hands to make an unprecedented break not only
with weapons of mass destruction but with militarism and all that it involves.
Everything that matters depends on this.

Gorbachev
is no pacifist, yet he seems to be an abolitionist: someone who believes in a
future without doomsday weaponry and even a future in which war is as
unthinkable as slavery. “The immortality of the human race has been lost and
can only be regained by the elimination of nuclear weapons. The nuclear
guillotine must be broken and with it the alienation of politics from ethics.”

He
spoke about democratization and the “revolution now in progress” in the USSR,
which he said was unstoppable and which shouldn’t be seen as simply a response
to western pressures or criticisms but as an event with local roots. “We want a
democratic society. We want more socialism and more democracy.”

He
said the main problem with politics is that it has become “soul-less.”
Gorbachev’s own view seemed to be summed up in the words, “Life will have its
way.”

On
the way out of the Supreme Soviet, an American journalist asked me what I
thought of Gorbachev’s speech. I said that words on a page or a face on a
television screen just aren’t the same as hearing someone speaking at length,
unedited, and in the same room. I hoped she could find a way to communicate the
possibility that what he says isn’t a propaganda charade. His speech reminded
me, I said, of Pope John XXIII’s encyclical, Pacem in Terris.

There
was a buffet lunch on the top floor of the Palace of Congresses, the one modern
building within the Kremlin, an unfortunate addition from the Khrushchev
period. For the first time this week, we had wine with our meal. With Gorbachev
in the room — both he and his wife Raisa were meeting Forum participants at
one end of the room — it seemed his campaign against alcohol could be relaxed.

After
getting close enough to Gorbachev to take a photo as requested by two of my
daughters (they hold him in the same esteem they have for the singer, Madonna),
I sought out Graham Greene who was sipping a glass of white wine. He has pale
watery eyes and a weak hand shake — he is 82 — but still a strong pulse in
his words. He worried that he had let rhetoric get the best of him during his
speech. A Russian writer acting as Greene’s guide mentioned that Monsignor
Quixote is to be published in the USSR next year. If so, it will be the first
book on Christian-Marxist dialogue, albeit in the form of a novel, ever
published in the USSR.

I
talked with actor Gregory Peck. We spoke about Dan Berrigan’s play, “The Trial
of the Catonsville Nine”, which Peck had produced as a film fifteen years ago.
It was a box-office disaster, he said, but won a film prize. Peck thinks one
day it will come into its own. I noticed Yoko Ono standing quietly by herself,
and saw Marcello Mastroianni, looking venerable and tired, cheerfully signing
autographs.

In
the afternoon I was one of several people accompanying Metropolitan Yuvenali to
the United States Embassy. With us was a priest from the Leningrad Theological
Academy, a Shintoist priest from Japan, a Canadian Dukhobor (a Christian
pacifist sect that Tolstoy supported late in his life), and a translator. We
were received in a small, dingy room on the ground floor. The Metropolitan
didn’t seem annoyed. In fact I was impressed by how warm and unpretentious he
was. He asked the embassy staff to forward to President Reagan a copy of the
final statement of the religious section of the Forum and the same medal — an
enameled medallion with a view of the earth from space — that had been
presented to Gorbachev in the morning.

When
the Soviet nuclear moratorium was mentioned, the embassy staff responded by
recalling that, in the sixties, it was the USSR that had broken a nuclear
moratorium that was being observed by both super-powers. But one of them said
that the new developments in the USSR were bound, sooner or later, to have a
positive effect on US policy.

Moscow,
February 17: Just before six I was picked
up at the hotel by Fr. Boris Udovenko, a priest from Kiev with a greying beard
who lived in Oxford for a year or two and speaks English fluently. We’re to
spend the next two weeks together.

We
spent two sweaty, unforgettable hours participating in the vespers service at
the Resurrection Church, a small parish a quarter-mile northwest of Red Square.
I don’t think that I have ever in my life been so jammed together with other
people. Normally the church isn’t quite so packed, I was told afterward, but
this happened to be the Feast of Our Lady Help of Sinners. The feast days of
Mary always means crowded churches.

It
was a struggle getting inside. Once there, it was impossible to move. I
couldn’t even raise or lower my arms. We were pressed together like match
sticks, a young woman on my left, an old babushka on my right, an elderly man
in front of me, and God knows who in back. Occasionally everyone would shift
and in those moments I could move. There was a space when I got my camera out
of my pocket, another space when I was able to raise it and take a few photos,
but then a long wait before it was possible to lower my arm and put the camera
back in my pocket. Neither being able to sing the music or understand most of
what was being sung, I alternated between silent prayer and simply watching
people, while trying not to stare.

It
is in prayer and love that the human face is most illumined and beautiful.
There were so many faces that seemed transfigured. I noticed one woman with
tears running down her cheeks, her lips trembling. She couldn’t have raised her
hands to wipe her eyes if she wanted to.

All
the while the two choirs were singing, the professional choir on the right, the
amateur choir on the left. The parish has an international reputation. I had
first heard about it from Fr. Alexis Voogd in Amsterdam whose daughter is
studying choir direction at the seminary in Leningrad.

At
times I closed my eyes and thought about nothing at all, not even about
standing, as I was being held up by those around me and was carried by the
music as a leaf is carried along on the surface of a stream.

Afterward
we went to the residence of Metropolitan (he was promoted from Archbishop last
month) Pitirim. [photo of him blessing food on the table] After a prayer
of blessing, we had a light supper of lenten pancakes — blini — with
sour cream. Then Fr. Boris and I went to the train station.

on
the train to Leningrad: What is it about
train travel that is so much more exciting than going by air? It was eleven
when we got to the train station. We walked through heavy snow and clouds of
steam until we found our car and then, after getting our bags inside, came out
and stood in the snow until the train began to move. Two others from the Forum
joined us for the trip to Leningrad, Milt Efthimiou, assistant to the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in New York City, and
Roger Williamson, an Englishman living in Uppsala, Sweden, where he directs the
Life and Peace Institute. We squeezed together in one compartment to drink tea
that was brought by the car attendant, very hot, in crystal glasses with silver
filigree holders.

I
asked Fr. Boris what prompted him to become a priest. “At first it wasn’t that
I wanted to become a priest, just that I wanted to be able to answer the
questions my class-mates asked me. They knew my parents were believers, that we
went to church. There was a certain amount of taunting and teasing, and
sometimes very hard questions that I couldn’t answer. So when I thought about
college, I had the idea of applying for theological study. Luckily, I was
accepted. I was in Leningrad four years. In 1958, when I graduated, I was
almost sure that I wanted to be ordained. But it wasn’t an easy choice. Even
those who have been sure from the beginning of their studies hesitated at the
last moment. It was the Khrushchev era, a hard time for our Church with many
churches being closed. Some graduates of the seminary went into factory jobs.
You didn’t know what might happen. Also I had as yet no plans to marry and in
our church you are either married — and this comes before ordination — or you
are a monk. I admire monks but I knew I didn’t want to be one! So all this took
some time. But a year later I was married — that was 1959 — and very soon
after that I was ordained. And there are no regrets about either marriage or
priesthood.”

We
sat talking for nearly an hour, sipping tea, watching the birch tress and the
blur of snow caught in the light from the train.

Leningrad,
February 18: After a morning round of more
scalding hot tea, we arrived in Leningrad at nine. A bright sky, brilliant
light, and a lot of snow on the ground.

I
can understand why visitors from the west feel especially at home here.
Leningrad is simultaneously exotic and familiar. The city is an architectural
rendering of Peter the Great’s desire to shake off old Russia and to embrace
the west. It looks like an idealized blending of Amsterdam, London, Rome and Venice
as they were 200 years ago: canals and wide avenues lined with long, low
buildings of classic inspiration. The main colors are creamy white, pale green
and creamy yellow. The fact that there are practically no signs or
advertisements, except for the occasional political one, contributes to the
city’s unspoiled appearance. At least in the center of the city, things are
less crowded than they ever were in western Europe. There is no sign, at least
in this part of town, of the grim sections described by Dostoyevsky in Crime
and Punishment.

We
had a glimpse of the pastel-hued Hermitage, formerly the Winter Palace of the
Czars, on the far side of the Neva River. It looks like it was shipped in stone
by stone from Versailles.

Directly
across the street from the Moscow Hotel, where we are staying, is the St.
Alexander Nevski Lavra. A lavra is a monastery of the highest order. There were
four in pre-revolutionary Russia and now only one of them, the Holy Trinity
Lavra in Zagorsk, is functioning. Still they refer to this one as a lavra.
Perhaps one day it will be alive with monks again. The seminary is on the far
side of the monastery grounds, nearly a mile away.

The
lavra’s principal church, the Holy Trinity Cathedral, remains open. Approaching
it to take part in the morning Liturgy, we joined a procession of people
walking up the snow-covered road that passes through the lavra’s chapel gate.

If
one uses the ancient cathedrals in Moscow as a yardstick, this cathedral
doesn’t look at all Russian. It is a wonderful church to be in but, if I didn’t
know where I was, my first guess would be Rome. Even the iconostasis manages to
look Italian.

The
most impressive part of the cathedral is the least beautiful, the large crypt
underneath where baptisms occur. About 200 people a week — well over 10,000 a
year — are baptized here. Baptisms alone would seem to be enough to keep the
cathedral’s six priests and three deacons fully occupied. One long passage way,
freshly painted white, has been made into a waiting area with old couches
lining the walls and icons of every period and style hanging above them.

After
the Liturgy, a priest who had been in seminary with Fr. Boris met us and showed
us around. Information for me was sandwiched in with news of friends with whom
they had studied. Fr. Boris hasn’t been in Leningrad in a long time. They had
much catching up to do.

Despite
the cold and the snow, we had a long leisurely walk in the cemetery adjacent to
the monastery. As with the Novodevichy Monastery in Moscow, or Westminster Abbey
in London, to be offered burial space here is among society’s highest honors.

Dostoyevsky’s
bust marks his grave, a place of constant pilgrimage even in icy weather. I
waited for a crowd of Russians to leave before taking my turn, took off my warm
fur hat and crossed myself in the Russian manner. [photo of Dostoevsky’s grave]

What
a thing it would be to see all at once the hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions, of people who have gathered at Dostoyevsky’s last resting place. One
of the people who prayed here before me, nearly twenty years ago, was the
founder of the Catholic Worker movement, Dorothy Dayxvii. I felt
as much in her company as in Dostoyevsky’s.

A
few yards away are the monuments to the composers Tchaikovsky, Glinka,
Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin.

We
went on to several working churches in different parts of the city. One church
has a fence entirely made of cannons all pointing straight up. Fence building
seems rather a good alternative use for weaponry: swords into plowshares.
Before the revolution, the church was a military chapel. Now it serves the
neighborhood. No service was going on when we arrived, but the pastor was
there, having just finished a funeral.

A
few people were busy counting and packing thin amber candles of the sort that
are placed in front of icons. Depending on size, candles sell for 30 kopecks to
a ruble each, which isn’t much but is far more than they cost to make. “This is
the main way that the Russian Orthodox Church supports itself,” Fr. Boris said.
“There are many thousands of candles sold every day in churches around the
country.” Churches also sell small silk-screened icons, about ten rubles each.
The greatest part of the sales price is a gift.

In
the late afternoon, we went out to the Piskarioskoye Cemetery where most of the
people who died during the siege of Leningrad are buried. In the course of 900
days, beginning in September 1941, 641,803 people perished. Although there were
casualties as a result of the 100,000 bombs and 150,000 artillery shells that
rained on the city, the majority died of starvation or illnesses brought on by
malnutrition. The highest death tolls, thousands per day, occurred during the
terrible winter months of 1941-42, when the city, in record cold, was without
heat and water. Weakened inhabitants simply froze to death on the streets and
in their homes. It was usual to see corpses being hauled to the cemetery on
small sleds. Students often had the job of bringing bodies out of the flats
when no family member remained with the strength to do this. Although the very
young and the elderly succumbed first, in the end the death rate knew no age
limits.

A
small museum next to the cemetery entrance allows the visitors a glimpse of
life in Leningrad during the siege. Behind glass there is a piece of black
bread and a ration card. Everyone got a 250-gram piece of bread each day. As
one can see from the piece of bread here, part of the weight was sawdust. Next
to the bread was a photo a schoolgirl and some pages from her diary: “Our
upstairs neighbor Ivan died last night.” “Grandmother died this morning.”
“Mother died.” “Father died.” The one death she didn’t record was her own.

There
is an eternal flame burning at one end of the cemetery, a statue of a grieving
woman — Mother Russia — at the other, and in between, mass graves marked only
by the year of burial. Around the eternal flame, partly hidden in the snow,
were thousands of flowers. We would have added a few ourselves but just as we
arrived, the flower stand had sold its last daffodil. It was sunset as we left,
yet people were still arriving by car and bus — old people, young adults,
school children.

I
was a baby in America during the 900-day siege. It is more than 40 years since
these deaths and yet there is this endless procession of mourners. I notice
some visitors leave pieces of bread — bread that would have saved the
starving.

Most
of the people at this morning’s Liturgy in the Holy Trinity Cathedral were
older women, but at tonight’s vesper service at St. Nicholas Cathedral, there
were nearly as many men. More surprising, a large part of the congregation was
in its twenties. I continue finding it hard to stop watching people and simply
to do what they are doing, which is praying.

Leningrad,
February 19: For visitors from the west,
the Hermitage is Leningrad’s major attraction. Imposing on the outside, it is
truly stunning within. There are no mere rooms but rather hall after hall, all
in the most ornate baroque style, every doorway opening into something quite
different and amazing and huge. It is an experience of endless splendor and
limitless wealth. Yet the limit was reached and the place did in fact change
hands quite abruptly. I lingered on the stairway that had echoed with the
shouts of Bolsheviks as they broke into this palace of gilded surfaces and vast
mirrors on the night of November 7, 1917.

Most
of these paintings were here when the revolutionaries took possession. The
collection, then and now, is mainly western European. Many of the canvases are
simply decorative work that would fit in well with feasts and balls. The agents
buying art work for the czars seem to have understood that they needn’t bother
with anything religious or conscience-stirring. Still there are a profusion of
astonishing treasures. The artists represented include da Vinci, Bruegel,
Dürer, Holbein, Rembrandt, El Greco, Rubens, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Degas, Matisse,
and Picasso.

A
mile away, in the Russian Museum, none of the artists represented are “names”
to the West, but a large part of the collection is both religious and
conscience-stirring. Few of Leningrad’s foreign visitors bother coming here,
but I found it the more engaging museum, a sister to Moscow’s Tretyakov
Gallery. In both museums, it is thrilling to see the gradual discovery,
especially by nineteenth century Russian artists, of what is really Russian
rather than lack-luster imitation of western European painting. This parallels
what was occurring in the writing of Pushkin, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy. Together
with the writers, the artists’ attention encompassed both rich and poor, the
beautiful and the wretched. At least two of the painters, Ilya Repin and
Nicholas Ghe, possessed a talent that can be compared to Rembrandt.

In
a painting of the Last Supper by Ghe, Judas is preparing to walk out while a
deeply troubled Jesus stares at the floor. In Ilya Repin’s painting of the
raising of Jairas’ daughter, Jesus looks like an intense young rabbi or Russian
Orthodox priest as he stands over the dead child’s body that he is about to
summon back to life. In Vasili Polenov’s painting of the woman caught in
adultery, Jesus is marked mainly by the terrified gaze of the accused woman
being pushed before him by a lynch mob. In these and similar paintings from the
late 1800s, Jesus is not a remote and terrifying figure but a man among us
living in a cruel world resembling our own.

Leningrad,
February 20: We were pilgrims today to the
apartment where Dostoyevsky lived the last years of his life. The flat has been
restored to something like the place it was when he was living there with his
wife and their two children, while the adjacent rooms contain an exhibition
about his life, including Russian and foreign editions of his books.

The
icon — Our Lady of Sorrows — that was in his writing room has survived.
Illumined by a vigil light, it hangs again in the corner of the room before the
desk where he wrote The Brothers Karamazov. It was in this room that
Dostoyevsky died January 28, 1881. We saw the note that his daughter wrote to
him earlier that same day, “Daddy, I love you.”

Over
his wife Anna’s writing desk there is a picture of the Nativity. “She was,” Fr.
Boris mentioned, “a deeply religious person with whom her husband often
discussed religious questions.” On her desk, in her own short-hand. were draft
pages of The Brothers Karamazov. A much younger person, she survived her
husband by nearly 40 years, living to see the Revolution.

In
the adjacent exhibition, among papers and documents concerning his life and
writing, we saw the kind of leg-irons he wore when he was a prisoner in
Siberia. We also saw a photo of Fr. Amvrosy, the monk who so inspired him and
who was a model for Fr. Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov. (I have heard
the prediction that Fr. Amvrosy will be canonized during the Church’s
Millennium Celebration in 1988.)

We
went on to the Peter and Paul Fortress, a walled island on the Neva and place
of imprisonment and execution for many dissident Russians. In 1849, Dostoyevsky
was about to be shot when the order from the czar arrived commuting his
sentence to four years of hard labor and internal exile.

In
the early evening Fr. Boris and I, after walking through heavy snow in a city
park, went to the seminary for evening prayer. Fr. Boris pointed to an icon
that had inspired a poem by Pushkin. Several students were lighting candles in
front of it.

In
the seminary chapel one is surrounded by choirs, a male choir to the right, a
choir of mixed voices to the left, and a third in the balcony in back, the
latter women in the school’s program for choir directors.

It
was the first time I have been in a church packed with young people — mainly
students from other schools and institutes in Leningrad.

Leningrad,
February 21: Fr. Nicholas Preobrajensky,
assistant rector of the seminary, has a prominent nose, short beard, a mass of
hair on his head, and large, intense eyes. Aided by photos displayed in one
corridor of the seminary, he told us the institution’s history since its
founding in 1809. The most surprising aspect had to do with the deep divisions
within the Russian Orthodox Church at the time of the Revolution in 1917. In
Leningrad, diverse factions took control of different parts of the seminary.

During
much of the Stalin period, the seminary was closed, but in 1946 the seminary (no
longer torn between factions) opened again. For a long time, only 150 students
were allowed, but in recent years there has been an enrollment of 450, at least
a hundred graduating each year. Since 1978, seventy of the students in
residence are women, a dramatic new turn for the Russian Orthodox Church.
Mainly they are here to learn choral direction, but one woman is now working on
a degree in theology. A three-storey women’s residence fills much of what used
to be the seminary’s back yard. All the students wear black, though for the
women a white lace bib is added. A number of couples met after the evening
service. There are many student marriages following graduation.

As
we sat in a language laboratory, after seeing a student-made video film on the
Orthodox Liturgy, I asked Fr. Nicholas to tell me about his background.

“Before
coming to the seminary,” he said, “I was a nuclear physicist. Had things gone a
little differently in my life, I would probably be making nuclear weapons now!”

I
asked him what had drawn him into physics. “I am attracted by exactness. I like
things precise and punctual.” He laughed. “Perhaps that is why I am the one to
make up the schedule for the seminary.”

Born
in 1944 in Pskov, he comes from a family of believers, which made his acceptance
into a university physics program exceptional, as this happened in the time of
Khrushchev. Eventually he became an expert in the separation of isotopes. “Then
I began to specialize in military applications at the institute where I was
working. At this time I also had a few papers accepted for publication. I was
married, a father. It was the beginning of success in my life, really, but I
felt something was missing and was drawn toward the Church. In the Church I
felt at home. Then I met Metropolitan Nikodim, at that time the head of the
Church in Leningrad. He was a special person with a gift to encourage young
people. He had an immense responsibility both here and in Moscow, yet sometimes
he would spend 30 or 40 minutes talking to me, even though the phone was
ringing. My father and uncle also helped, bringing me books to read. Study is
important. But I am the sort of person who has to look at everything through my
heart. I like to feel and not only to know. Step by step, I turned toward
another side. Then in 1978, after nine years in physics, I gave up my job at
the institute and entered the seminary.”

Wasn’t
it very hard to be given permission to leave nuclear physics? “Not at all. It
was hard only for me to take the step. It was hard to change after so many
years of work in a certain direction. But it became clear to me. I started
giving my books to a colleague, perhaps to prepare him for the step I was about
to take, showing him I didn’t need these things anymore.”

He
graduated from the seminary after only three years, was ordained, assigned to a
Leningrad parish, and then a few years ago was asked to return to the seminary
as a member of the faculty. “I loved being in a parish and miss that. I like
people and they like me and it was an unbelievable life. I still get letters
from people in the parish. It was there more than in seminary that I discovered
that I was born to be a priest, even though it was sometimes hard and
exhausting. But I learned about the gospel in the parish, something you cannot learn
in a classroom. Liturgical life is life itself.”

He
has four children, a son and three daughters, ages five to fifteen. “Every
evening at bedtime I read them something about God. They like it. My eldest son
is reading the gospel and whatever he wants to ask, he asks, and I answer in
front of all the children. Sometimes I organize a meeting with questions to
discuss in front of the whole family. Sometimes they ask why in school do they
say this or that and we talk about it. Perhaps one day they will be students
here! But I don’t want to push them.”

I
asked if his father had tried to him into the Church. “Never. He always said it
was my decision — no one else could make it, and no one could force it. I
agree. The Church doesn’t need anyone who is pushed, only those who come from
the heart. We need the passionate, we need energetic people, not those who are
only luke-warm.”

As
a young person, was he embarrassed to come from a family of believers? “Yes. I
tried to hide every trace of belief. I was ashamed to show it, to witness it,
before students and teachers. If you wore a cross, they would say, ‘Ah, so
you’re a priest!’ It was a very hard time for believers. We didn’t know what
was coming. A lot of churches were closed. So I learned to give the answers they
wanted to hear. You learn to say whatever is on television or in the papers.
But now a new wind is blowing. It hasn’t yet touched religion but we believe it
will and we are beginning to live as if it had already touched us. This will be
something new for all of us, this democratization.”

He
mentioned as a particular example of the new climate the film, Repentance.
“It would never have been shown in earlier times. Now it is being shown all
over the country and each theater is filled. Our whole faculty went to see it
together.”

Fr.
Nicholas’ sister died in the siege of Leningrad and his father — born 1915 —
was in prison during part of the Stalin years, before the war. “Yet my father
never lost his Christian view. ‘Receive life as it comes to you,’ he always
told us, ‘and never hold anyone to blame but yourself.’ Father knew those who
had him arrested but he never spoke about them with anger.”

He
returned to the discovery of his own vocation. “In my childhood there were many
pieces pointing toward the priesthood. Even the smell of incense — I remember
that from childhood. I was away from the Church a long time but these memories
helped me find my way back.”

It
was a long conversation, much longer than either of us intended. Finally we
embraced each other and said good night.

Sunday,
February 22: After waking to find fresh
snow falling on the city, we returned to the seminary for the Holy Liturgy. It
was more crowded than on weekdays, again mainly student-age participants but
more older people. The singing was ravishing. The women’s choir in the balcony
invited me to stand with them. I went up just as people were lining up to
receive communion and watched the slow simple ritual. I have never been in a
Russian church where so many people were communicants on the same day, at least
half the congregation. I wished I could be one of them. It is not only the
ecclesiastical border that stands in the way but the preparation that Russians
make for communion — much more than is presently required in the Catholic Church.
“If you want to receive Communion,” Fr. Boris explained, “you prepare in a
hundred ways. On the evening before the Holy Liturgy, you go to the evening
service and pray the canon of repentance. You pray to the Mother of God and the
Archangel. You pray when you are waiting in line for a bus and in a store. You
don’t drink or eat after midnight. When you wake up read the morning prayers.
The night before or in the morning, you ask the priest to hear your
confession.”

We
had lunch in the seminary refectory: soup, bread, whipped potatoes and a piece
of boiled chicken. Nothing to drink and no dessert.

After
lunch I talked with Fr. Alexander Ranne, Professor of Moral Theology. We had
been together to the American Embassy in Moscow last week where he had described
to the Embassy staff some of the discussions about war and peace going on in
his classroom. He has a face shaped like an onion, a wispy beard and mustache,
large and gracious eyes, a kind smile. He was born in 1952, has two children, a
one-year-old son and a daughter, age seven.

His
was no dramatic conversion story. “My father was a priest and I was grateful to
be his son. I never felt like merging with the unbelievers. I sang in the choir
and was a sub-deacon to Metropolitan Nikodim. I never had any hesitation with
what side to take, although I did consider the invitation to join the Young
Pioneers [similar to the Boy Scouts] when my teacher asked me. I came home and
asked my father, ‘Father, will you bless me to be a member of the Pioneers?’
Father said to ask my teacher if I could wear both the Pioneer kerchief and the
cross. The teacher said only the kerchief, so I didn’t join. Everyone always
knew that I was a believer. After the Army, I had a long discussion with my
father and then entered the seminary.”

He
graduated in 1978, was married and ordained, then — his wife remaining in
Russia — went to Rome for further study of moral theology. Apart from
Christmas and summer holidays back in Russia, he was in Rome for three years,
living at the Catholic Church’s Russian College, the Russicum, while
taking classes at the Gregorian Institute.

We
talked about his teaching. “The topics in moral theology include marriage and
celibacy, sexuality, teaching children how to live a moral life, relating to
nature and technology, freedom, and vocation. It is a lot! I try to engage the
students in dialogue. Sometimes I take a devil’s advocate role to get them
started. But usually they speak freely and easily.”

I
asked what it is hardest to teach. “How to be patient! And questions about
freedom — what it is and how to exercise it.”

Fr.
Boris and I walked out of the seminary to find the snow had stopped falling and
the sky had cleared. Leningrad was sparkling again.

Each
day in Leningrad we have tried to get into the Museum of Religion and Atheism
in what used to be the Cathedral of Our Lady of Kazan. Surprisingly this
prominent institution for the promotion of scientific atheism was closed each
time we tried the door, but this afternoon it was open and we went in to look around.

“As
a student,” Fr. Boris recalled, “I used to come here and join a tour group and
then correct the guide’s mistakes. It was a little mischievous.”

Fr.
Boris found the museum had changed since his student days — no more graphic
portrayals of the Inquisition or similar blood-stained horrors in
Christianity’s cellar but a more subtle attack on religion. Note is even taken
of some of the positive aspects of Christianity, especially the peace work
Christians are engaged in. But the main message of both the displays and the
guides is that, by and large, the Church has been indifferent to the poor if
not actively exploiting them, that it frightens people with threats of hell and
gets believers to put up with injustice in this world by the assurance of justice
in heaven.

The
museum had many visitors. We listened for a while to one of the guides, an
attractive young woman fashionably dressed, explaining how the Church had
cheated people out of money with the hope of miracles.

“It
is clever to treat religion as something so dead that its relics, like dinosaur
bones, need safekeeping in a museum,” Fr. Boris said. “But I don’t think it
convinces many people.”

The
museum seemed to me infinitely sad, first of all because of the sins of
Christianity down through the centuries are no fabrication, but still more
because the museum locks rather than opens doors. It makes the churches look
ridiculous and dishonest — easy enough to do — while ignoring or minimizing
the positive aspects. The museum ignores the genuine questions that draw one
toward God. The place strikes no spark of joy and communicates no sense of
meaning.

Still
there was some real beauty here. The exhibition that I found most engaging was
a full-size model of a monk’s hermitage — a rough-hewn log cabin with a narrow
straw-covered plank for a bed, a simple table and chair, and an icon in the
corner warmly lit by a vigil candle. Surely many visitors must find in this
something beautiful and even challenging. It isn’t an image of corruption but
of people so drawn to God and so absorbed in prayer that they are absent-minded
about the acquisitions and ambitions most of us consider so necessary.

The
museum also exhibits many outstanding icons. I couldn’t help but notice the
reverence with which some visitors stood before these sacred images. “Even
here,” Fr. Boris remarked, “people take steps toward faith.”

Novgorod,
February 23: Novgorod means New Town,
which was true about eleven hundred years ago. The city is dense with ancient
churches, 77 of them, wonderful to look at though only a few of them are
currently places of worship. In earlier times, when it was one of the principal
cities of Russia, it was known as “Lord Novgorod the Great.” Its circular
kremlin, called the Detinets, stands on an embankment above the Volkhov River,
with the Market Town on the facing bank. The present fortress wall of red brick
was put up in the 1480s. In the center is the Cathedral of St. Sophia, its six
towers topped with green helmet-shaped cupolas.

We
were welcomed to Novgorod by Fr. Michael, who has a very Russian face: pale
skin, high forehead, hair combed straight back, the bone behind his eyebrows
very pronounced, slate-blue eyes, huge hands, and mightily built, really, a
body worthy of a bear. He was born in 1924 in Pskov. In 1944 he was badly
wounded while fighting on the White Russian Front. After the war, he studied at
the Leningrad Theological Seminary. He has been a priest nearly 40 years, most
of them in Novgorod. “It is a city,” he said, “of churches, legends and saints.”
He is chairman of the city’s Church Council and pastor of a local church,
assisted by several priests and deacons.

He
has a passionate spirit. “People don’t just listen with their ears,” he said
over lunch, “but they feel with their heart. They know if Christ is in you or
not.”

We
visited his own parish, the Church of Sts. Nicholas and Philip, part of which
dates from the twelfth century. These were originally two adjacent churches,
facing different streets, but like an old married couple, they grew into each
other. Now it is one structure, shining white, with shingled onion domes, wide
log porches with rough wood stairs leading up to them, and two icons set into
the outer walls of the church, with vigil candles flickering before them. On an
icy day like this, as we trudged through deep snow, the icons were fireplaces
of warmth and invitation.

Often
the inside of an old church isn’t as beautiful as the outside, but here the two
are well matched thanks to a new iconostasis made in the sixteenth century style,
the work of contemporary artists from Palekh. The dominating colors are mustard
yellow, a thick creamy white, dark red, and dark green. There is no gold or
silver overlay. The village of Palekh, northeast of Moscow, is internationally
renowned for painting scenes from Russian legends and fairy tales on little
boxes and brooches. Many of them are in museums. Before the Revolution, Palekh
was a center for painting icons. Some of the village artisans, having moved to
Moscow, are reviving Palekh’s earlier tradition.

There
is a saint’s body, Nikita of Novgorod, in the smaller church which is a place
of prayer and veneration for many pilgrims. Fr. Michael lifted the coffin’s
glass lid so that Fr. Boris and I could kiss the silk vestment that covers the
saint’s face. This was a startling experience for me. In the Catholic Church,
we also venerate not only the memory but the body of saints, but not this
intimately. I managed to overcome my resistance. What a sweet fragrance arises
from this ancient corpse! I shall never again regard the phrase, “the odor of
sanctity,” simply as a curious line of poetry.

We
went back to St. Sophia’s Cathedral. It was built between 1045 and 1050 when
Prince Vladimir was still reigning in Kiev and Russian Christianity was in its
infancy. It is a museum now, but Fr. Michael has arranged to have recordings of
Orthodox chant played for visitors so that they can have a faint idea of what
the place would be like as a living church.

Two
of the cathedral’s massive bronze doors also give witness to the undivided
church that still existed when this building was put up. Brought here in the
twelfth century from the city of Magdeberg in northern Germany, then a trading
partner of Novgorod, its surface is covered with reliefs of biblical scenes done
in a fine Romanesque style, inscribed in both Latin and Slavonic. The doors
mirror stone carving of the same period still found in numerous Romanesque
churches in the France.

It
was intriguing to see in the back of the church a massive stone cross set within
a circle, the Celtic rather than Russian or Latin types. This dates, I was
told, from the fourteenth century. Is it evidence that the Celtic monks came
this far east, or that Novgorodian traders found their way to the Celts?
Novgorod was a great trading city for centuries, doing business from
Scandinavia to Constantinople. Were it not for the Russian carving on the face
of the cross, and the Christ in the center being crucified on the Orthodox six-pointed
cross, one would guess the cross had been brought here from the island of Iona
in the Inner Hebrides or the mainland of Ireland.

In
a nearby building is a museum with a remarkable exhibition of Novgorodian
icons, though it contains but a fraction of its pre-war collection. Nearly all
of the museum’s 5,000 icons were taken away during the Nazi occupation. Only
500 have been recovered.

Some
of the treasures of the collection were saved through the heroism of museum
staff who entered the building despite heavy shelling of the town, taking what
they could carry away to safe hiding places.

One
of the rescued items is a sixteenth century icon showing a miracle that
occurred here in 1169 when the town was about to be attacked. The bishop had a
dream in which he was told that he should bring a certain icon of the Virgin
Mary from a nearby church and place it on the wall of the town. In the top
third of the icon, one sees the icon, Our Lady of the Sign, being carried in
procession into Novgorod where some of the townspeople await it on their knees.
In the middle section of the panel, the town under attack, the icon is mounted
on the wall and is about to be struck by arrows fired by the enemy’s archers.
“One of the arrows struck the eye of the Virgin,” Fr. Michael said, pointing
out the wound in the icon, “Tears flowed from the icon, showering Archbishop
John who was standing underneath. It was a sign that the holy Virgin was
begging God to spare our city.” In the bottom section, the Novgorodian
soldiers, three of whom haloed as saints, ride out of the city gates with a
sword-wielding angel flying overhead. Already some of the foe’s horses are
turned to flee. To the Novgorodians, the icon suggests that the city’s real
defense is Mary. For Fr. Michael she is still the defender not only of Novgorod
but of Russia. Now this miracle-working icon is lodged in the museum. One sees
where the arrow struck the eye-lid of Mary.

In
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Novgorod, unlike most Russian cities,
experienced a much greater mercy. It was spared the Tartar invasions. But
Novgorod’s good fortune ended in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In
1456, and again in 1471, war broke out between Moscow and Novgorod. In both
cases, Novgorod was defeated. Up to that time, Novgorod was a remarkably
cosmopolitan principality run on democratic lines. Princes were elected and
often deposed, and bishops too. A parliament — veche — was assembled
for town meetings by the ringing of a great bell. When Ivan III subdued
Novgorod the second time, he had the Veche Bell, symbol of the city’s
republican independence, removed. But, according to legend, the great bell
tumbled off the cart not far from the city walls and shattered into many
pieces. Each shard grew into a small version of the mother bell. “Ivan could
take the bell and crush Novgorod’s traditions,” said Fr. Michael, “but he could
not take from the people their longing to freely choose, and reject, their
rulers.” Small brass bells are still the city’s main souvenir. I was given a
set of three by Fr. Michael.

In
1570 Ivan the Terrible came to visit, an experience from which the city never
fully recovered. Many leaders as well as common people of Novgorod were
tortured to death or drowned in the river. In the Cathedral of St. Sophia, the
ornate throne he occupied still stands.

All
day Fr. Michael and our young guide, Tamara, took turns retelling the legends
of Novgorod.

One
story concerns a certain bishop of Novgorod who was falsely accused of having
an affair with a local woman. The bishop, deposed by the local people at a town
meeting, was put on a little boat on the river, whose current normally would
have carried him north to the next city. Instead the little boat went against
the current toward a nearby monastery. Thus the people knew that the bishop had
been chaste. The Novgorodians begged him to forgive them and remain. Perhaps
the greater miracle is that, despite the calumny, he agreed to do so.

A
curious fact about the River Volkhov is explained by a legend concerning a
certain merchant of ancient times, Sadko, whose ship sank in a lake to the
south. Under the water, he became acquainted with a mermaid princess who fell
deeply in love with him and wanted to become his wife. But the prince missed
his wife in Novgorod and longed for her so much that the compassionate princess
gave him back his life in the mortal world. The princess was so saddened by his
departure that her tears made the lake overflow its borders and form the river
that now divides the city of Novgorod. The river, they say, is still made of
her tears.

“This
is why,” said Fr. Michael, our river is the only one in northern Russia that
never freezes over.” It is true that every other river we have crossed in the
past week is frozen hard enough for trucks to drive across, while here the
river is still flowing.

It
is no legend that there are tears in this river. In the last war Novgorod was
almost totally destroyed. A quarter million Russian soldiers, equal to the
number of people who had lived in the city during the war, died in the battle
to regain Novgorod. All but three of the city’s churches were devastated during
the war and have since been painstakingly rebuilt. The reconstruction is still
going on nearly half-a-century later. One couple, now in their late sixties,
has spent their entire working life reassembling the fragments of the frescoes
of a certain church that was blown up as the German army withdrew. The walls
have been rebuilt and now most of the frescoes are back in place. The couple
hopes to live long enough to complete their work.

We
ate our evening meal by candle light in a small chamber, once a guard’s room,
high in the kremlin wall where a tower has been turned into a restaurant. The
slit windows gave as a wondrous view birch trees illumined by the sunset. We
drank kvas, a mildly alcoholic drink made from black bread, and ate a
big meal.

Fr.
Michael asked what the Peace Forum in Moscow was like and what people in
America and western Europe think about Gorbachev and the changes happening in
the Soviet Union. I said the Forum would probably receive little press
attention, but there was growing respect for Gorbachev and awareness that major
change was going on.

Fr.
Michael responded by recalling the writings of a second century theologian:
“According the Church Father Tertullian, every soul is, of its original nature,
Christian. This means that if you dig deeply enough, you will always find
something of the image of God in each person. It’s always there. I have seen
this myself all my life. You find it in people who are certain that they are
unbelievers, certain there is no God. This is why our government stopped
exploding nuclear weapons. The longing for peace is something deep in each
person’s soul. It is natural for the soul to want to live in peace, to do
things for peace. In our church, all my life, I have always heard it taught
that we must love everyone — believers, non-believers, Russian people, people
from other countries. We are told to love people no matter what. Everyone is in
your family. So it is natural to think about peace, and not only to think about
it, but to think: What should I do? What is to be done? We are so capable, so
strong. We make these big weapons. We are really clever. But are we clever
enough to put them aside? Can we do something to make understanding? Can’t we
do that? Can’t we do things that are good for life, things that don’t destroy?
Can’t we do good and useful things?”

He
paused, then added, “They say that Gorbachev’s mother is a believer, and you
know that babushkas have influence!”

I
asked Fr. Michael if young people were becoming active in local parishes.
“Young people are mainly interested in football and hockey and pop music,” he
said. “Few of them have yet started thinking about the real questions of life.
Still they are able to listen to you and to feel if Christ is in you. You have
to speak to them heart to heart. When we do that, we find young people coming.
Thanks be to God!” He made the sign of the cross as he said that. “I have a
daughter, 30 years old. She and her family are believers. And they obey me.”

He
spoke of a six-year-old grandson who said, “Grandpa, when you sleep, your skin
and body grow. How can it be that, without God, while I sleep, this happens?”
Grandfather answered, “‘Everything, including your body, is made by God, and
God made it to grow.’ This pleased my grandson. He now is coming to church and
always holds out his hands in the Russian manner for me to give him a blessing.
When he comes to stay the night in our house, he asks his grandmother at
bedtime, ‘Babushka, will you read me prayers?’”

Pskov,
February 24: Our train arrived in Pskov at
three-thirty in the morning. Despite the hour, two priests were awaiting us on
the platform, Fr. Constantine, huge and bearded, and Fr. Alexi, thin and
clean-shaven. Side by side they looked like the Russian version of Laurel and
Hardy. We were driven to the hotel in a car with an icon over the rear-view
mirror.

After
four hours of sleep and breakfast, we went to Fr. Constantine’s church, built
in 1699 on the site of the oldest Russian cathedral dedicated to the Holy
Trinity. It stands in the middle of the city’s kremlin, towering over
everything else. In the upper church the iconostasis rises heaven-ward like
Jacob’s Ladder. But, as it is winter, the upper church was ice cold.

Fr.
Constantine regards it as a miracle that the cathedral survived the war. More
than ninety percent of Pskov’s buildings didn’t, including most of the
structures within the kremlin walls. The German Occupation lasted three years,
involved many executions before the withdrawal, and ended in general
devastation. In a guide book I noticed grim photos of some of the hangings that
occurred in a public square near the cathedral. As the Germans were getting
ready to withdraw, they placed explosives throughout the cathedral. At the cost
of their own lives, two Russian soldiers helped save the church

In
the lower church the morning service was in progress. Over to one side, toward
the back, was an open coffin containing the body of an old woman. A funeral was
set to follow the Liturgy. Paying no attention to their dead neighbor, the
large congregation was matter-of-factly at prayer around her.

Back
in our car, we were on our way into the countryside. The sky was a shining
porcelain blue. We passed through a succession of villages filled with old
wooden houses. Dramatic icicles hung from the roofs. The wind constantly blew
snow across the road. It seemed as if we weren’t driving on the road but flying
high above the ground over feathery cirrus clouds. The villages seemed nearly
empty of people — it was too cold to come out except of necessity. The wooden
houses were of many colors: bright blue, deep yellow, light brown, pink, dark
red. Those few who braved the cold wore heavy fur hats and several coats.
Occasionally we encountered pairs of horses pulling the kind of sleds Americans
associate with Santa Claus. Mothers pulled sleds as well. Little bright-cheeked
faces with large eyes were all that revealed the contents of the passive woolen
bundles on the sleds.

“Here
Russia begins!” So said Fr. Constantine as we passed through thousand-year old
walls on a high hill behind the Church of St. Nicholas. We were about fifteen
miles west of Pskov. We got out of the car and walked to an icy ledge on the
steep hillside beyond the church. The walls we passed through weren’t high but
extremely thick, made of heavy unfinished stone. “These walls have withstood
many enemies,” Fr. Constantine said, patting the stone. The church within the
walls, still a working church, is nearly as old as the walls, thus almost as
old as Christianity in Russia.

From
the hill we could see miles in every direction. There was a village below us,
the bright colors of the houses emphasized by the snow, trails of smoke rising
from the chimneys. On every side there were fields and forests and more hills.
The immaculate scene looked as if it had been painted for us by a Russian Grant
Wood.

Fr.
Constantine is himself a sight to see: a face carved out of a football-size
potato, flowing wild beard, thick eyebrows, greying hair combed straight back. I
looked at him and thought, “This is where Russia begins!”

Our
destination was the Pskovo-Pechorsky Monastery, on Russia’s Estonian border,
one of the principal centers of religious pilgrimage in the Russian Orthodox
Church.

The
monastery is built into a deep fold between two densely wooded hills. Nearly a
mile of fortress wall is wrapped around this thicket of churches and other
buildings. Before passing through the walls, Fr. Constantine took us along a
path that makes a sudden turn and then offers a stunning view of the monastery.
What a blaze of color: gold, ultramarine, magenta, lemon, crimson, moss green,
turquoise, and white snow. “Monks have lived here since 1400,” said Fr.
Constantine, “almost six centuries, and it has never been closed, Despite invasions,
occupations, revolutions, it has been a place of uninterrupted prayer. It is
one of our miracles. The walls have withstood nearly 800 assaults and siege
after siege. It is Russia in miniature.”

We
turned back toward the monastery, passing under a candle-lit icon in the main
gate where we were met by one of the black-robed monks, Archimandrite
Nathaniel. He has a long, deeply lined face, intense eyes, and a curly grey
beard. This past Sunday, he mentioned, was the fortieth anniversary of his
entrance into the monastic community. Before that, he was in the army. In fact,
it being Armed Forces Day, he had pinned to his habit the two medals he won in
the war. A number of the pilgrims at the monastery today were uniformed
soldiers.

Fr.
Nathaniel was quick to speak of Pskov’s contribution to Russian history, and
the monastery’s contribution to Russian Orthodoxy: six canonized saints, many
bishops, and two Patriarchs, including the Church’s current head, Patriarch
Pimen.

He
led us into the monastery’s caves where about 10,000 people are buried.
Originally these were carved by water draining through the hills, but the monks
have given them a uniform width and height and added linking passages where
needed.

Entering
the caves was a dream-like experience. Thin candles in hand, we stepped into
the pitch black, narrow sandstone tunnels. The floor is covered with thick,
fine sand. Fr. Nathaniel walked ahead of us, but backward, so that he
could more easily talk to us. He knows every inch and turn of the caves as a blind
man knows the house he lives in so he had no need of a candle. The candles were
for us. The one in his hand only served to illuminate his bearded face which
seemed to float in the dark before us.

We
paused at many places to note markers in the wall. Occasionally we came upon
small chapels. At one turn in the caves Fr. Nathaniel opened a low metal door.
Inside we saw a large room carved into the rock with a coffin in the foreground
draped in a black cloth embroidered in red that had been part of the robe of a
monk who had recently died. Further back our candles faintly illumined similar
coffins heaped high like empty boxes in a bin at the supermarket.

The
remains of Pskov’s saints are elsewhere in the caves in glass-topped coffins
that can be opened for pilgrims, as two were for us. We reverenced the bodies,
crossing ourselves and lightly kissing the vestments. One of them, St. Kornily,
had been beheaded at the order of Ivan the Terrible. Just as in the little
church in Novgorod, I discovered a remarkably sweet smell in the coffins.

Among
the monastery’s treasures are three “miracle” icons. One is an icon of the
Assumption of Mary. The monastery is especially linked with the feast of Mary’s
passage into heaven, which it celebrates for three days in mid-August in the
company of many thousands of pilgrims.

Fr.
Nathaniel is an historian, theologian and poet. Again and again in our
conversation he spoke of the importance of beauty.

“The
understanding of God,” he said, “is the understanding of beauty. Beauty is at
the heart of our monastic life. The life of prayer is a constant well of
beauty. We have the beauty of music in the Holy Liturgy. The great beauty of
monastic life is communal life in Christ. Living together in love, living
without enmity, as peaceful with each other as one dead body is peaceful with
another dead body. We are dead to enmity.”

I
was reminded of Dostoyevsky’s words in The Idiot, “Beauty will save the
world.”

But
Fr. Nathaniel has a sharp edge. He displayed a special irritation with atheists.
“I say to them, ‘You are not an atheist, you are a satanist. You know, just as
Satan knows, that there is a God.’” So much for the Christian-Marxist dialogue
at Pskov! His fierceness fits him. He didn’t become a monk to be a diplomat but
rather to be free to be passionate about his faith.

I
met a quite different personality in Fr. Zinon, the community’s young but
already famous icon painter. He did, for example, the iconostasis of the Church
of the Protecting Veil at the Danilov monastery. I have heard people in Moscow
compare Fr. Zinon with Rublev.

The
community cherishes Fr. Zinon’s vocation and has built an old-style log cabin
as a place for him to work. A large window with glass assures him plenty of
northern light. The room is warm not only from the stove but from the colors
and the smell of paint. In one corner I noticed lapis lazuli stones being
soaked in preparation for grinding. All the colors used to paint an icon are
hand-made from natural substances, mostly minerals. On the easel was a part of
the iconostasis he is painting for another church under restoration at the
Danilov monastery, the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils.

I
asked Fr. Zinon if he had been raised a believer. “No, though my mother is a
believer. For me I started to come to belief when I was an art student. I was
searching for some time for a copy of the Gospels and finally found a copy and
then read them through. Then I decided.” I was struck by the monastic
directness of his answer. Though he is a young monk, 33, he already has the sobriety
I associate with the monastic life.

I
asked him about icons. “They are not like civil painting. They aren’t for
museums. They aren’t decorations. They are a reflection that God became man.
They are holy doors.”

Did
he feel free to make changes in the traditional images? “The icon painter
hasn’t the right to change an icon just to be different. Icons carry the real
feeling and teaching of Orthodoxy. It isn’t the painter’s own work. It is from
heaven. We who are called to paint them are not icon producers. We never sign
what we paint. We are just making copies.”

Was
special preparation needed to paint an icon? “Yes! It is the fulfillment of
prayer. You need to feel the Spirit. You can feel icons only during prayer. And
icons are only for prayer. An icon is a place of prayer. You paint it in the
same way you prepare for a church service, with prayer and fasting. It is a
liturgical work. Preparing to paint an icon is like preparing to celebrate the
Holy Liturgy.”

We
had both lunch and supper at the monastery. Lunch was in the refectory with all
the monks, supper with the abbot, Fr. Gabriel, in a nearby house. The great
treat on the abbot’s table was pickled mushrooms that had been picked in the
neighborhood during the summer. “Come back someday with your wife and gather
mushrooms,” the abbot proposed. “Until you have picked mushrooms, you haven’t
been in Russia.

Pskov,
February 25: The day started with what was
intended to be a brief stop at to the Church of St. Nicholas and the Mother of
God in a village adjacent to Pskov. A funeral was underway when we arrived. A
coffin contained a babushka who seemed short and very thin. The family stood on
one side of the coffin along with several ancient women, friends of the
deceased. Each was holding a lit candle. The sons and daughters ranged from
their thirties to their fifties. With them was a wide-eyed child of about four
who watched everything with amazement. He reminded me of Yuri in the opening
chapter of Dr. Zhivago. There was a choir of three. The priest, Fr.
Vladimir Popov, incensed the body, sang prayers, put a paper and candle in the
hands of the dead woman, then each friend and relative kissed her hands and
forehead. The daughters and old women wept, the men looked as if they were
carved from stone, the child seemed deeply puzzled. A cotton burial shroud was
laid over the body while the choir sang, “Dust thou art and to dust thou shalt
return, until the day of the resurrection.” An icon of the Resurrection was on
a stand in the middle of the church. The coffin lid was laid over the body and
with solid blows the nails were hammered in, a terrifying sound that announced
death more vividly than any words.

After
the funeral, Fr. Vladimir invited us to have a cup of tea with him at his home,
a small wooden house nearby. His wife, though a medical doctor employed at the
clinic of a local factory, happened to be home and insisted we have something
to eat. While she went into the kitchen, Fr. Vladimir showed us the icon corner
of their living room. One of the pictures was of a saint recently canonized by
Pope John Paul II: Maximillian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest who, while a
prisoner at Auschwitz, gave his life to save a Jewish inmate. In the picture
Kolbe is shown as an emaciated man in striped prison uniform.

We
were called to the kitchen table for a meal of blini, mushrooms, melted
butter, pickled fish, beets and sweet nuts, plus vodka and tea!

“It
isn’t possible to know the Orthodox Church from outside,” Fr. Vladimir said.
“It is mostly hidden. It is in the house as much as it is in the church. There
are so many special rituals for each hour, each season. This week, the week
before Lent, we eat blini. It is a life full of meaning and inspiration.
And it always seems original!”

Fr.
Vladimir’s wife, Helen, showed me a photograph of their son, nineteen years
old, now in military service in the far east on Kamchatka Peninsula. Despite
his uniform, he looked so young.

A
priest’s wife is often addressed as matushka] (mother). I asked her if
it was hard being a matushka. “In some ways, yes, and yet again, no. It
is a vocation and it can only be done if you are willing to love. You have to
be a spiritual person, a praying person.”

I
asked how they met. “It is a wonderful story,” Fr. Vladimir answered. “It is
really amazing. Helen’s father was a priest in Siberia, in Tomsk, and I visited
him. I was doing my military service. He showed me his daughter’s photograph
and I said immediately, ‘That’s my wife!’ When Helen and I actually met we
loved each other from the beginning and now it is more than twenty years we are
together. Our marriage was, I think, something that happened to us even before
we met.”

I
asked about changes he had witnessed in his thirteen years as priest of the
local church. “Many changes. At that time our church was in very bad condition.
Everything had to be repaired. But it wasn’t only the building that was in
trouble. We have had to repair the congregation as well. But now it is quite a
happy church. We really care for each another. We have a choir of twenty. Even
those people who rarely come, like the children of the woman we buried today,
are glad we are here. And we have more and more young people coming. In the
last ten years the average age has gone down from the fifties to the forties,
and some are only in their teens and twenties. There is a higher level of
education among believers. There is perestroika [reconstruction] going
on in the political sphere of this country, but it has been going on even
longer in the Orthodox Church. The outside perestroika begins with inner
perestroika. The spiritual life is the inside of the social life.”

We
said goodbye reluctantly, then drove deep into the countryside to the estate of
Mikhailovskoye. Here the poet and writer Alexander Pushkin lived during two
crucial years of his internal exile, from 1824 to 1826, when he was punished
for his involvement with revolutionary discussion groups. He was 25 when
ordered to leave St. Petersburg.

For
two centuries Pushkin has been part of the glue holding Russians together.
Often Russians recite his poetry by heart. His poems and stories are the basis
of ballets and operas. His statue seems to be in every park. Wherever he lived
there is a museum in his memory. Mikhailovskoye is a place of pilgrimage.

Fr.
Gabriel, abbot of the Pskovo-Pechorsky Monastery, and one other monk met us
there. The abbot knows the museum director, Simeon Geichenko, and had arranged
for us to meet him. He and his wife live in a house close to the one Pushkin
occupied, offering a similar view of the Sorot River, now solid ice, and beyond
it miles and miles of unspoiled hills and forests. To honor Pushkin, the region
is closed to industry. Practically speaking, the view we saw is the same view
that refreshed Pushkin’s eyes on a winter day.

We
entered the director’s home through a large enclosed porch sheltering an
extensive collection of samovars, the traditional Russian device for providing
a ready supply of boiling water so that tea can be brewed at any moment. While
all samovars are fashioned on the same principle — a reservoir for water built
around a column containing hot coals — the design possibilities are as diverse
as the variations in Russian church architecture. There were several hundred
samovars on this porch, no two quite the same. In addition one wall was covered
with horseshoes, a long row of small bells hung from a ledge over a window, and
the ceiling was plastered with strips of bright colored paper. The intense
smell of warm cinnamon enveloped us the moment we entered the house. I felt
like I was falling through the rabbit hole in Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland.

We
passed into the kitchen, the source of the cinnamon smell, then through a
narrow hallway into Simeon Geichenko’s study. Apart from the window over his
desk, the room was lined with books floor to ceiling, with an island of
additional bookcases standing in the middle. A narrow bed covered with a
patchwork quilt stood in a back corner. Pushkin’s death mask was on the wall as
well as several of Pushkin’s drawings.

Simeon
Geichenko is now 87. Before the war, he was director here, then he fought in
defense of Leningrad. The war cost him his left hand. Ever since he has been
back here running the museum, organizing Pushkin conferences, and writing books
and essays.

Fr.
Gabriel brought a new book for the director’s library, a samizdat
(self-published, unofficial) essay about Pushkin. Fr. Gabriel said the author
lives in Leningrad. “St. Leningrad,” the director responded. (Leningrad
was originally named St. Petersburg.)

We
went to Pushkin’s small, unpretentious house. Icons hang in a corner of each
room, clean embroidered linen draped over the tops, sprigs of herbs tucked
behind the frames, and fresh flowers in vases beneath the vigil candles. “In
this house Pushkin turned toward Russian rather than European sources of
inspiration,” Fr. Boris said. “His nanny, Arina Rodionovna Yakovleva, was a
woman of deep faith and love of Russia. While most of the intellectuals in St.
Petersburg were speaking French better than Russian, she opened the door into
Russia for Pushkin. He loved to hear her retell the traditional Russian stories
and later he made some of them into poems that today every Russian child knows
by heart.”

Fr.
Boris recited part of a poem written by Pushkin later in his life, after his
nanny’s death:

As
in so many cities, there is a statue of Pushkin in Pskov, but in Pskov’s case
his nanny is shown sitting behind him, knitting, as if to say, no Arina
Rodionovna Yakovleva, no Pushkin. In the icons and spinning wheel at
Mikhailovskoye, one senses her abiding presence.

In
1837 Pushkin was buried, as he had wished, at the Svyatogorsky Monastery not
far from Mikhailovskoye. The church is at the top of a steep hill with
Pushkin’s grave just behind the church. I remarked what a pity it was that the
monks were gone and the place now only a museum. Fr. Gabriel said it was his
hope that he would live to see a monastic community here again. “Pushkin didn’t
want to be buried in a museum but in a place of prayer.”

We
had a meal together at a local restaurant. Late in the meal Fr. Gabriel fixed
me in his stone-steady gaze and said, “We need the Holy Spirit’s influence!
With the Holy Spirit, we can solve every problem. Whatever action is inspired
by the Holy Spirit is more important than any speech or any project. What we
need is the Holy Spirit! Everything else comes afterward.”

He
toasted the book I am writing. “What you see of our country, our church, our
people, how we live, what is good, what is not good — all these things you
have to tell. Tell what you have seen and how you have felt. It is missionary
work. You are making a bridge between believers East and West and also between
believers and non-believers. May the Holy Spirit give you strength and
understanding. May God help you in your good actions!”

He
prayed the book would be a contribution to peace. “King David said that for God
a thousand years are like a single day. But time is very important to us! If
God gives us a day, he gives us a thousand years. So much depends on what we do
with the time God gives us. If we live in love, God may give us an extra day,
an extra thousand years. What does it mean to God to give us a thousand years?
Nothing! But it is important for us. And these days, these years, they are not
just for you and me, not just for believers, but for everyone, for the whole
world.”

He
pointed out that his friend, Simeon Geichenko, is a member of the Communist
Party and therefore presumably a non-believer, though, as I am so often
reminded, one never really knows who believes and who doesn’t. But Simeon
Geichenko, said Fr. Gabriel, “is a good man for believers. He is always eager
to welcome whomever I send to him.” Fr. Gabriel recalled that when he was first
elected abbot, he was only 35, and Simeon Geichenko used to say to him, “How is
it going, sonny?” But now when he sees the abbot he says, “How is it going,
granddad?”

Moscow,
February 27: After an night ride on the
train from Pskov, we arrived at six-thirty in the morning. A theological
student was waiting for us and took us to the Hotel Ukraina. After a nap, I
woke to find Moscow under a clear sky of pale colors. There was less snow than
there was two weeks ago.

The
apartment building across the street is crowned by a red and white sign a
hundred yards wide: “Yes to the peaceful policies of the Leninist state!” The
same banner was there in 1983 and there are similar ones in prominent places in
Soviet city and town. But I have never noticed Russians looking at them. I
remember an Intourist guide who said, “We no longer see these signs. They are
mainly to alarm tourists.”

I
discovered I had left my one good pair of trousers in Pskov. Nothing had been
ironed in two weeks ago. I occasionally managed to do laundry in the bathroom
sink but my jacket and trousers were looking as if they had been run over by a
parade of trucks.

Fr.
Boris’ solution was to take me clothes shopping at the GUM department story on
Red Square. It is an amazing place: a vast, glass-roofed green-house three
tiers high, full of shops, cut through with pedestrian avenues and laced with
overhead wrought-iron bridges that give a stunning view of this
pre-revolutionary palace of commerce and cash registers. In the very center is
a large fountain.

I
bought a three-piece grey suit, good enough for a banker but with buttons where
American clothing would have zippers, and also a pair of pajamas for future
train rides.

After
wandering around GUM we walked the neighboring streets until our feet were numb
from the cold, then went back to the hotel where I put on the suit. After two
weeks in the same woolen jacket, it was a major transformation. I was no longer
the scruffiest American in the USSR. After lunch, we went out to the Danilov
Monastery where I visited the Church of the Protecting Veil to pray and have
another look at the iconostasis painted by Fr. Zinon.

We
stopped to see Archdeacon Vladimir Nazarkin, on the staff of the Church’s
External Affairs Department, who had spent the morning at a meeting of the
Commission preparing the Millennium celebration. We had met several times, but
I have one special memory of him: I was sitting next to him one night on my
first visit to Moscow when I tried to keep up drop for drop with the Russians
and ended up hardly able to walk. Vladimir consoled me by recalling that I was
lucid until the very end. We drank tea this time.

Fr.
Boris is suddenly gone. His brother arrived unexpectedly in Moscow today. We
had a hurried goodbye and embraced each other with emotion. For the next few
days I’ll be with Georgi Dereviantchenko, who had arranged for Fr. Boris and me
to travel together.

I
went for a long solitary walk in Gorky Park, enjoying the crunch of snow and
the sight of a few couples wandering the park paths together.

Zagorsk,
February 28: Georgi was at the hotel in
time for breakfast, and with him was a colleague, Tatiana Tchernikova. It was
Tatiana who first took me to a living Orthodox church three years ago and
taught me how to bow, how to cross myself, and how to stand — never to put my
arms behind my back or in my pockets.

Driving
north to the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra in Zagorsk, I asked them about the
Russian Orthodox way of keeping Lent. “We keep a strict Lent,” Georgi said. “No
meat, no milk, no butter, no cheese, no eggs. But we don’t starve to death. We
eat potatoes, bread, and vegetables — salted cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms —
and we drink a lot of kvas. Also there are three days of exception: the
Annunciation, the Feast of the Forty Martyrs, and Palm Sunday.”

I
asked about Georgi’s background. “We have the saying, ‘When trouble comes, open
the gates wide.’ Everyone in the Ukraine, everyone in Russia, knows how true it
is. My father died in combat two weeks after the German invasion. My mother and
two brothers and sister and I spent the next three years living under German
occupation in the Ukraine.”

I
asked how much he remembered of the war. “I was only seven when it started, but
I remember everything. Everything! We children had to work and work hard. In
the towns and cities, eighty percent of the adult population around us were women,
in the villages ninety percent. Children worked side by side with their
grandparents. We grew quicker than children should grow, but not in size. We
became older than our age. There wasn’t enough food. Living under the
Occupation, we saw horrible things. People were hung, people were shot. You
would see the bodies hanging there. I remember the hanging of a woman whose
husband was a partisan — she had come into the town, more than eight months
pregnant. She was hung with her unborn child and the body left hanging in the
middle of town, the word partisan attached to her dress over her belly.
The mother and child were left there to rot. It was in 1943. Until now I
remember it. I can never get this out of my thoughts.

“And
the most horrible thing was that you got used to these crimes! They became
normal life. It is hard for our children to understand why we older people are
the way we are — why we take nothing for granted, why we can’t stand to see
anything wasted. Sometimes we are angry with our children who have never known
anything like that and can’t imagine what it was like and what we went through.

“It
is amazing what children can survive. It was much harder for my mother, going
through the war without her husband, and with four children depending on her.
It wrecked her health, but she survived and lived until 1968.”

Georgi
got a law degree before going into the Moscow Theological Seminary in Zagorsk,
but when he graduated in 1958, no one in the class was ordained. It was during
that period of renewed religious repression under Khrushchev when thousands of
churches were closed. “In some ways it was a terrible time, but in other ways
not. I try to remember the good. Now Metropolitan Pitirim proposes that the
Church ordain me, but I hesitated. It would require such a re-organization of
my life. I think I am too old for such changes.”

Georgi
is a friend of Fr. Gabriel, the abbot of the Pskovo-Pechorsky Monastery. They
were both in Jerusalem and spent a great deal of time together. Both of Fr.
Gabriel’s parents were killed in the war. He was raised by a priest.

As
we reached the last hilltop before Zagorsk and saw all those glorious churches
and towers in the distance, I asked where the pilgrims stay. On the great feast
many thousands come, but pilgrims are plentiful every day of the year.

“There
are hotels,” Tanya answered. “Or do you mean real pilgrims? The real
pilgrims won’t stay in hotels. They have walked here, some of them walking for
many weeks, and they sleep wherever they can, under bushes, in the houses of
those who offer them a bed, in sheds, whatever they can find. In Zagorsk they
sleep inside the monastery walls.”

So
there are still real pilgrims in Russia, the holy tramps, the fools for Christ.
Old Russia, Holy Mother Russia, is still quietly, stubbornly existing after all
these years.

In
fact most of the people coming here, though they come by bus or train or car,
are also pilgrims, even if living a settled life with a normal job and no
chance for thousand-mile walks. I saw the devout attitude in their faces as
they passed under the main gate leading through the walls into the monastery
ground. They are coming to stand and pray in a holy place.

But,
as I noticed during the time we lived in Jerusalem, there are also many
tourists, people who come because they have heard it is something special,
something beautiful and amazing, something historic, and of course it is
amazing, this flock of colorful churches behind these massive walls.

It
was a blessing to be there, to again venerate the body of St. Sergius, and to
stand quietly before the Trinity icon.

We
met Fr. Vladimir, the seminary’s assistant rector, an archpriest, 47 years old,
father of two children. Over lunch we talked about bread. I told him about
Rosemary Lynch, a Franciscan sister, 70 years old, who lives in Las Vegas,
Nevada, where she helps receive refugees. One of those put in the care of her
community was a Russian whose profession is the restoration of icons,
unfortunately a skill with no employment possibilities in Nevada. All that the
nuns could find for her was a job clearing tables in a casino restaurant.
Because of a state law requiring that food left on the table be thrown out, the
work provoked a crisis of conscience for the woman. She was horrified having to
throw away uneaten food, but especially bread. She came home one night in
tears, saying, “They make me throw away the body of Christ!” She finally quit
the job.xix

The
Vice Rector nodded his head as he listened. “I can understand her. If we drop a
piece of bread on the floor, we pick it up, kiss it, and eat it. We cannot
imagine throwing bread away. This has always been true for us, but since the
last war, we also think of all the people who starved. Even though bread costs
almost nothing to buy, it contains a lot of work. All bread is holy. All bread
is a reminder of the Savior.”

We
talked about exiles, their loneliness, the disappointments they often
experience, their nostalgia and bitterness. Yet some manage to build bridges
between Russia and the West. He mentioned as an example Nicholas Zhernov, whose
book, The Russians and their Church, I have been reading.

On
the way back to Moscow, Georgi continued the conversation about those who seek
exile and those for whom exile would be the worst punishment. “We usually have
an attitude of loyalty toward our country even if we don’t agree with the
leaders. Motherland is motherland! It is our mother and many of us can’t
understand how anyone would leave or even want to leave. Often there are hard
feelings about such people. But still they are our brothers, our sisters.
Sometimes we know some of them personally. Anyway, it is never simple. Every
family has troubles, every group has troubles, every society, every country has
troubles — every one has troubles! One of the best ways to forget about
your own troubles is to be an expert on the troubles of someone else, to
condemn that other person instead of facing your own guilt. But we Russians
say, ‘Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you.’”

After
supper in the hotel I ran into Tamara, who is employed by the Russian Orthodox
church. She was with her husband. “Be careful,” she said, “this man is a member
of the Communist Party. But what can I do, he is also my husband and he has a
few good points.” They invited me to eat some apples and share a bottle of
champagne. “She is a believer and I am not, so we are enemies,” her husband
said with a smile. I asked him how it was living with a believer. “Terrible!
She gets up in the morning and instead of making breakfast, she stands in front
of the icons and prays!” “But do you know what I am praying for?” she said. “I
am praying that you will learn to cook breakfast.”

Vladimir
and Suzdal, March 1: After a long ride
east from Moscow on roads clogged with trucks, Fr. Germann welcomed Georgi and
me to Vladimir. He is a monk, 30 years old, tall, with long hair, a full beard,
fine features, a piercing gaze. Fr. Germann radiates both joy and rootedness.
Wearing his black velvet monk’s cap and long black coat with black fur collar,
no one overlooks him when he passes by. I enjoyed watching people staring at
him as he sailed down the street.

Fr.
Germann’s nature is “at all times and everywhere to give thanks to Almighty
God.” While we were in Vladimir’s Assumption Cathedral, I mentioned to him that
this church must have wonderful acoustics. Though we were far from alone in the
cathedral, he immediately sang an exuberant “Amen” — long, unrestrained,
banner-like. The whole huge church vibrated in an astonishing way.

The
Assumption Cathedral, for centuries the home of the Vladimir icon of the Mother
of God, was built in 1189, replacing a smaller church that had been destroyed
by fire. In 1238 the cathedral was the scene of tragedy: the Tartars, having
broken through the city ramparts, attacked the cathedral, burning all who had
sought refuge within its walls: the prince and his family, the bishop and
crowds of towns people. It was the first of many Tartar assaults on Vladimir.
Even so most of the church survived, including parts of a fresco of the Last
Judgment.

Adding
to the cathedral’s beauty are several frescoes by Andrei Rublev painted in
1408. In one of these, St. Paul is preaching to a crowd, an exhorting arm
raised in the air, his other hand gesturing the way toward the Kingdom of God,
very much the model for many twentieth century paintings of Lenin.Russian
revolutionary iconography has its roots in Russian religious iconography.

The
Holy Liturgy is celebrated here daily, as well as other offices of prayer, plus
funerals and baptisms. It is a busy, lively church served by five priests, five
deacons, and at least one nun. Two choirs take full advantage of the churches’
acoustics.

We
looked at several other churches and visited a museum with a local guide who
knew dates and names and historical terms but who revealed little of the
spiritual meaning of what we saw. Fr. Germann added what was missing. I noted
the guide was as fascinated as I was.

We
drove 30 miles to Suzdal, a smaller town but crowded with beautiful churches,
though only one of them a living parish. “In Suzdal,” Georgi noted, “you see
ancient Russia. The first Russian settlers came here in the eleventh century.
From the sixteenth century to the twentieth century, very little changed. No
trains or factories ever came here. Ever since the Revolution, it has been
forbidden to build any new structures. An exception was made for the hotel
where we are staying, but it had to be put out of sight. People consider Suzdal
the most beautiful town in Russia.”

The
Convent of the Intercession was once the dwelling place for women belonging to
the nobility, including the dismissed wives of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the
Great. The nuns are gone and their refectory now is a restaurant where we had
an exceptional meal, yet I could hardly pay attention to it as I was so
absorbed in listening to Fr. Germann.

We
found a special bridge between us in St. Seraphim of Sarov, whose compassionate
face welcomes me in icons in every living church. St. Seraphim, though he died
only 150 years ago, has become one of the most beloved saints in the Russian
Orthodox Church. “St. Seraphim helped me to become a believer,” said Fr.
Germann. He has in his care a fragment of the rock on which St. Seraphim prayed
for a thousand days. It was a gift from an old nun who knew a nun who knew a
nun who knew Seraphim. The saint’s few possessions, among them the heavy cross
he wore, were in the custody of the convent that formed near him at Diveyevo.

“St.
Seraphim is a unique saint,” said Fr. Germann. “With St. Sergius, I think he is
the most beloved saint in the Russian Church. Believers venerate him
wholeheartedly. In him and his character, in his spirituality, we find the
principl Christian characteristics — love for all people without exception, and
a readiness to sacrifice. That’s why people love him so much.”

“We
live in a time that pays special homage to advanced education and intellectual
brilliance,” Fr. Germann added. “But faith isn’t just for the clever. Though he
prepared for a career in architecture, Seraphim didn’t graduate either from
university or seminary. All his ideals were gifts from God revealed through
prayer and deeds. And so through St. Seraphim many different people are drawn
to belief — the intellectuals, the simple, and now not only people in the
Russian Orthodox Church but other churches.”

He
told me a very Russian tale about a rich man who came to St. Seraphim and was
healed by him, so healed that the man gave up all his wealth and embraced holy
poverty. The man, Mikhail Mondarov, had a young sister, age 28, who joined the
community of nuns associated with Seraphim. When her brother was dying, she
wanted to die in his place, though, as she confessed to St. Seraphim, she was
terrified of death. “Please bless me father. I’m afraid to die.” Seraphim
responded: “Why be afraid? For us death opens the way to eternal joy.” After
she left him, she fell ill and died, but her brother lived on for many years.
She is buried near the monastery. Fr. Germann, who sometimes goes to Sarov, has
visited her grave.

Before
his death, St. Seraphim said to the sisters: “My joys, come as often as you can
to my grave. Come to me as if I’m alive and tell me everything, and I will
always help you.”

Because
of St. Seraphim, Sarov is a place of pilgrimage. Though no working church is
presently functioning there, two elderly nuns receive pilgrims and pray with
them, showing the relics handed down to them, occasionally giving a fragment
away as they did to Fr. Germann. “St. Seraphim is the face of the
Church,” said Fr. Germann.

We
talked about the monastic life, which has never been easy to understand for
those outside it, and which is almost incomprehensible in the modern world. “In
our society,” said Fr. Germann, “the monk’s vocation is very strange. Not everyone
can understand it and certainly it isn’t for everyone, in fact it is for very
few. Yet there are still many who feel drawn to it, who want to have the
fullest possible spiritual life and to withdraw as much as possible from civil
life.” This withdrawal is complicated by the dearth of monasteries and
convents. “But the way opens if you are patient. We live singly or in pairs in
small apartments and spend most of the day either in the church or visiting the
sick or tending to other needs. At home we live the monastic life much as it
would be lived in community.”

I
asked what occasioned his religious awakening. “It was something natural but it
is hard to describe. I was eighteen when it began. To learn about the church,
not knowing anyone to tell me, I borrowed atheist books from the library and
often could find in them parts, quotations, for example, that helped me, though
the books themselves weren’t very deep. Atheism can’t really influence anyone.
It can’t answer the deepest questions. It can’t give a direction in life. But
when you read about a saint like Seraphim, even if you aren’t a believer, you
can’t help but be impressed. After some time I felt led to go to the Holy
Trinity Lavra in Zagorsk and there I had the idea that before I died, maybe I
would be a monk. And now I am already five years a monk, and only thirty!
Thanks be to God! In families of non-believers, believers often emerge. Young
people go to church. They become believers, priests, nuns and monks. Sometimes
they lead their parents to belief. The monk in front of you is such a person!
Now my mother is a believer, and my sister sings in the cathedral choir.”

We
talked a little about the Russian Orthodox Church. “It is both conservative and
demanding, reluctant to accept any change and cautious about new ideas.
Throughout the year we have a long liturgy, even in winter. But this aspect has
protected our Liturgy. Orthodox people don’t want changes that would make it
quicker or less demanding. We want to be servants of God. This is our freedom.
That is what it means to us to be believers. Yet many miracles comes from such
living. You develop a deep sense of gratitude and awe. The beauty of our
services cannot be done in a hurry. But when you have time, the singing becomes
the highest prayer. Our prayers are poetry and they have to be sung, and the
authors, like St. John of Damascus, are the finest poets.”

There
are various ways of understanding history. For Fr. Germann, for whom the
central reality is God, human history is the history of the saints, a saint
being anyone for whom God is at the center of life. “Each saint is a unique
event,” said Fr. Germann, “a victory over the force of evil. So many blessings
can pour from God into the world through one life. And such holiness is so
needed in these times when there are so many who are poor in faith, when so
many aren’t fond of the spiritual life or the Christian faith. Let the Lord
give us more saints.” Saying this, and with a cheerful smile, he crossed
himself.

Before
parting, Fr. Germann taught me a short prayer in Russian, “Bozhe milostiv
budi mi greshnomu” — Lord, be merciful to me a sinner. “Use it while you
are flying back to Holland tomorrow.”

April 1987

Before leaving Moscow at the beginning of March, an
invitation came for me to return at Easter. “Easter for the Orthodox is what
Christmas is for the churches in the West,” said Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk.
“It is our season of complete joy. You cannot write about our Church and not
describe how we celebrate the Resurrection.”

Moscow,
Holy Thursday, April 16, 1987: Vladimir
Tyschuk met me at the airport. “Call me Volodya,” he said. “Metropolitan
Filaret has asked me to help you in your travels for the next two weeks.” He is
23 years old, plump, has a pink round face, ruddy blond hair, a young
moustache, wears a black leather jacket, works for the Church’s External
Affairs Department, and hopes soon to begin theological studies. “I am
following our family tradition,” he explained. “My father is a priest. Until
recently he was pastor of a church in the north of Moscow. Now he is pastor of
a Russian Orthodox parish in Tokyo.”

I
complimented him on his English. “It’s easy for me. When I was 12 and 13, with
my mother and sister, we lived in New York, where father was one of the priests
serving at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral on East 97th Street.”

After
checking me into the Ukraina Hotel, we decided to see the icon collection at
the Andrei Rublev Museum, in earlier times the Andronnikov Monastery, a place
Volodya often visits.

There
are sometimes significant differences between icons bearing the same name and
involving the same composition. While there is only one original of the
Vladimir icon of the Mother of God, for example, there are hundreds of
thousands that are closely modeled on it and which bear the same name.

Moving
slowly through the exhibition, I found myself attentive to little things in
icons I hardly noticed six months ago — tiny differences in color, aspects of
expression, the gestures of hands and eyes. So much of the art of the icon is
nuance.

In
the basic elements of composition, the artist simply does what others did
before, working within guidelines that go back to the Russian Church’s Council
of One Hundred Chapters six hundred years ago and, before that, to the Seventh
Ecumenical Council in 787. At both Councils it was taken for granted that an
icon is primarily a work of spirituality. The icon painter, the Russian Council
ruled, must be “meek, mild, pious, not given to idle talk or to laughter, not
quarrelsome or envious, not a thief or a murderer.”xx Nothing
is said about artistic ability, but of course that was necessary too and often
was of a very high order. “The best icons are the work of skilled masters,”
Volodya pointed out, “yet it is not always the most competent who touch my
heart most deeply.”

It
is really a mystery why a particular icon throws open a door within the soul
and makes it easier to experience God’s presence. There is a superficial
similarity between Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity and many copies by later
masters, yet it is rare to discover one that communicates a similar spirit. The
angelic faces and bodies often seem rigid, with eyes more suggestive of
judgment than love.

We
saw a Fifteenth Century icon of John the Baptist by Rublev or one of his
students. The Baptist is often portrayed as being fierce, but here he is
imploring God’s mercy on behalf of all sinners, and no one could be less
ferocious. The painter used few lines, the detail is minimal. The eyes are shaped
in a maternal way that mirrors the eyes of the divine figures in the Trinity
icon.

I
stopped for a long time in front of two Sixteenth Century icons that formerly
were in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kyrill-Belozershy (Kyrill-White Lake)
Monastery 200 miles from Moscow. In the first Jesus’ body is being taken down
from the cross, in the next the disciples are burying him. In both icons Mary’s
face is pressed against the face of her son. It is the same action, the same
relationship of faces, as in the Vladimir icon of the child Jesus and his
mother, except the roles are reversed. In the Vladimir icon, Jesus is pressing his
face against Mary’s in a gesture of consolation as she gazes into a future that
leads to the cross. Now it is Mary pressing her face against her son’s at the
foot of the cross when all that she had dreaded has finally happened.

Another
icon, painted in Moscow in the late Sixteenth Century, is of Anne and Joachim,
the parents of Mary, embracing each other. They seem so connected, so deeply in
love. [use photo of the icon] I don’t recall ever seeing in western
religious painting such a celebration of marriage. At least since the division
of the Western and Eastern Churches in the Eleventh Century, it is rare for
those canonized in Rome to be married, which perhaps helps explain why the
Catholic Church has the tradition of clerical celibacy, links holiness with
celibacy, and is better known for sexual prohibitions than sexual affirmation.
This icon suggests that to love someone in marriage is to participate fully and
intimately in God’s love for that person. It is from such a depth of love that
Mary was born.

In
a new building on the monastery grounds there is an exhibition of skillful
copies of frescoes by Rublev and other masters. I was most surprised by a
wonderful fresco of Christ in glory by Rublev — Christ looking like a smiling
dancer. Over and over again in Rublev’s work, there is a stunning and joyous
sense of God’s love, that depth of mystical encounter that Thomas Merton referred
to as “mercy within mercy within mercy.”

In
the middle of the monastery stands one of the most beautiful structures in
Moscow, the Spassky (Savior) Cathedral: small, exquisite, light as air, built
in 1420, since then very badly damaged but now restored on the outside.

A
bronze statue of Rublev stands in the small park outside the monastery’s main
gate. Rublev is shown as a tall lean figure in a simple monk’s habit, an inward
gaze in his eyes, his hands supporting wood panels that rest at his feet. It is
exceptional work with an icon’s epic calm. “There is a rumor that Rublev will
be one of those canonized at the Church Council next June,” Volodya told me.

In
order to keep Lent, we ate in a little cafe rather than in the hotel
restaurant. We had a meal of bread, cucumbers, and raspberry soda.

Afterward,
with Volodya away to take care of travel arrangements, I had a long walk with a
retired English pastor visiting Moscow as part of a Pax Christi group. We
strolled southward on Kalanin Prospekt, away from the Kremlin, stopping in a
sidewalk cafe for a raisin-bread bun and a glass of apple juice with slivers of
apple at the bottom of the glass, all for 17 kopecks.

Moscow,
Good Friday, April 17, 1987: This morning
we met with the Dean of the Church of Our Lady, Joy of the Sorrowful, Fr. Boris
Guznyakov, a tall man with a grey beard and a deep scar on one cheek. He has
been worshipping in this central-Moscow church for 40 years, since the parish
was re-opened after being restored from damage it suffered in the war. He has
been a priest here for 26 years. He reads Shakespeare and treasures an edition
of the Authorized Translation of the Bible printed in Oxford in the Nineteenth
Century.

I
asked him if the congregation had changed greatly in the 40 years he had been here.
“There has been the usual process of change,” he said. “We have a lot of young
people. Come and see tonight!”

He
said that after the war, there were few baptisms compared to now. I asked how
many there were now. “We keep no statistics.” Yet he did have one statistic —
the neighboring church, 150 yards away, has twenty times more baptisms than
this parish. Why? “Each church has its own peculiarities. The neighboring
church is right next to a tram stop, so it is easier for people. But we will
soon get more, because the city is building a new metro station right next to
us.”

Accepting
his invitation to return to worship, for three hours this evening we stood near
the choir, separated from it only by a wooden barrier that was, in effect, an
extension of the iconostasis. Through a slight opening I glimpsed a few of the
singers — two women, several men, a boy in his late teens. There was a smaller
choir on the opposite side of the church. Among the choristers was a girl of
about ten with a face fresh as Eve’s in the first week of creation.

The
high point of the service was a funeral procession through the church, the
priests and deacons carrying an embroidered icon of the dead body of Jesus.
Before the service started everyone had reverenced the life-size image. It had
been placed in the center of the church with masses of flowers all around. Four
people carried the funeral pallet. The pastor walked underneath carrying the
Gospels. Quite a lot of people, including many children, joined the procession.

I
was surprised at how my own feelings were affected by this simple, austere
ceremony. We were all caught up in the crucifixion and burial of Jesus. I found
tears spilling out of my eyes, and was not alone in my grief.

The
choir sang mournful, simple music. Though some of those in the choir are
professional opera singers (the choir is well-known for its recordings), there
is nothing operatic in the music of Good Friday.

There
were several bursts of sung Alleluias during the service. Once again it
impresses me that the Russian Orthodox Church, while quite capable of
explaining what it does, prefers to do rather than to explain — to
paint an icon rather than to publish a book about the Holy Trinity, to sing
Alleluia at Jesus’ funeral rather than to give a sermon about life after death.

Back
in the hotel, reading a biography of St. Seraphim of Sarov, I found a stanza
from a Russian song for Good Friday:

Moscow,
April 18 — Holy Saturday: Volodya and I
went to a morning church service in northeast Moscow at the Church of St. John
the Warrior. As we arrived a reader was singing in a deep bass voice from the
Book of Isaiah.

Listen to me, O coastlands,

and hearken, you peoples from afar.

The Lord called me from the womb,

from the body of my mother he named my name…

And he said to me, You are my servant…

I have graven you in the palms of my hands…

Hearken to me, you who know righteousness,

the people in whose heart is my law;

fear not the reproach of men…

For the moth shall eat them up like a garment,

and the worm will eat them like wool;

but my deliverance will be for ever,

and my salvation to all generations…

How beautiful upon the mountain

are the feet of him who brings good tidings,

who publishes peace, who brings good tidings of good,

who publishes salvation,

who says to Zion, Your God reigns…

Who has believed what we have heard?

And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men;

a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,

and as one from whom men hide their faces

and was despised, and we esteemed him not…

The
chanting of Isaiah went on and on in shifts.

We
listened for an hour, then went back into central Moscow for a walk on Arbat
Street, the only street in Moscow closed to traffic. The Arbat is old,
relatively unspoiled, and lined with small stores that include quite a number
of used-book shops. Volodya regularly searches for Pasternak’s famous Russian
translation of Shakespeare’s plays. It was interesting to discover a number of
religious books and several old Bibles for sale. Despite the changes in
progress in the USSR, religious books are not yet on offer where new books are
sold. One of the old Bibles was sold while we were there. Walking back toward
Kalanin Prospekt, we had a cup of coffee made from beans ground while we
watched — delicious!

Then
we were off to the airport to catch our flight to Kiev.

Kiev,
April 18: “We have the proverb,” Volodya
told me, “that ‘your tongue will lead you to Kiev’. It is something like the
saying in the west that all roads lead to Rome. Kiev is the mother of all
Russian cities, the first fountain of our culture and language, and the place
where Russia was baptized.”

Most
of the way the sky was clear. We had a fine view of rolling hills, huge
forests, and snow-covered villages. I glimpsed horse-drawn sleds on forest
tracks. As we got further south, the snow on the ground turned to patches.
Finally, under a grey cliff of clouds, we could see Kiev, capital of the
Ukraine and now the third largest city in the USSR, shining on steep hills over
the Dnieper River.

We
were met by Fr. Boris Udovenko, the priest I travelled with in February and
whose home is Kiev. He hopes to be with us at least while we are in Kiev, and
perhaps will be “blessed” by the Metropolitan to come with us to Odessa. We had
both lost a few kilos since we were last together — “the mercy of Lent,” he
said.

We
drove to a hotel, also named the Ukraina but this time in the Ukraine,
had a light meal, and then Volodya and I were put under orders to nap in
preparation for the all-night Easter service.

Kiev,
Easter, April 19: Christos Voskresye!
Veyeastino voskresye! Christ is risen! Truly he is risen! I have heard and
exchanged these words countless times in the past twelve hours, so often that
the words seems to say themselves.

Just
after ten, Fr. Boris, Volodya and I drove out to Fr. Boris’ parish, Our Lady of
the Protecting Veil, a brick church built in 1906 that stands on a hilltop on the
west edge of Kiev. Though it was still half an hour before the service was due
to start, there was a steady stream of people walking up the dark hillside. A
policeman stood at the foot of the hill blocking the way to cars. An exception
was made for us but only when the driver promised to bring the car back down
after dropping us off.

Though
it isn’t a large church, there were at least two-thousand people jammed inside
and as many around the church. Fr. Boris thought it best to put me on the altar
side of the iconostasis where there was space and also a few chairs. I was, at
first, disappointed. A true Russian Easter is spent standing in the crowd, not
on the altar side of the iconostasis. But after the first hour I realized I
wouldn’t have lasted through the service otherwise. Apart from having to spend
five hours on my feet when I would normally be sleeping, I would have suffered
from claustrophobia. In fact at one point someone in the congregation reached
her breaking point and started to scream. Space was made and friends got her
outside where she could sit down and recover.

I
was near the center of the iconostasis, next to the Royal Doors, where I had a
view of tables heaped with Easter bread — kulich — in the foreground
and a sea of faces illumined by candle light.

The
people who stood out the most from my vantage point were a group of lanky
teen-agers who had apparently never been in church before — “window-shoppers,”
Volodya whispered to me. They didn’t cross themselves, didn’t bow, but behaved
like passive spectators at a play. The women didn’t wear scarfs. The tallest, a
young woman, looked like her Dutch counterparts — short blond hair cut in
punkish style standing up from her head, and blue-shadowed eyes. The most
striking thing about was her alert eyes, round as saucers, watching everything
with awe. Now and then she pointed out to her boyfriend something that had
caught her attention. There was real excitement in her face, a deep engagement.
Perhaps one day I shall return here and find her wearing a scarf and crossing
herself.

Volodya
and I were not the only lay people behind the iconostasis. There were half a
dozen old men who seemed to be fixtures of the parish. One had a white
moustache spread across his face like the wings of a sea gull. Another walked
slowly with a cane but stood throughout the service singing with the priests in
a rich bass voice.

There
were four priests, one deacon, and an acolyte. The dean, Fr. Nicholas, has a
moustache and goatee. The oldest priest seemed paralyzed on one side yet
managed both to stand and walk. More than anyone else, he directed the singing
at the altar, starting off the special Easter hymns, indicating the rhythm with
one hand, radiating delight. He offered many gestures of encouragement and
appreciation.

At
times it seemed like anarchy at the altar. Little whispers and much sign
language about what to do next. One of the priests would start singing
something loud and clear, another priest would cut him off with an urgent
whisper, “Not yet, not yet!” Then someone else would take the lead. It was
rather wild and disordered but amiable. No one seemed to mind.

Actually
it wasn’t Easter when the service began. Lent had another hour to run. Easter
began with a sung announcement of the resurrection. The dean went out the royal
doors into the congregation and sang out, “Christos voskresye!” Everyone
responded in one voice, “Veyeastino voskresye!” It is impossible to put
on paper how this sounds in the dead of night in a church overheated by crowds
of people and hundreds of candles. It is like a shudder in the earth, the
cracking open of the tomb. Then there was an explosion of bell-ringing. Russian
bells sing their own Easter hymn in a particular pattern of sound that rejoices
in the victory of life over death.

The
congregation, singing an Easter hymn, followed the priests out of the church
and circled the building in a slow procession. Those already outside, holding
candles in their hands, parted to make way for the procession. The singing was
continuous. All the while the bells were sounding out for miles around, in the
deepest night, the news of the resurrection.

Finally
the procession came back into the church. Once again there was hardly room to
breathe. The priests arranged themselves in front of the iconostasis and sang
the opening five verses of the Gospel According to St. John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made
through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was
life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and
the darkness has not overcome it.

This
was done first in Church Slavonic, then in seven other languages: Ukrainian,
Russian, Greek, Latin, English, French and German. More languages would have
been used if they were known to any of the priests. “The more languages we use
in singing the Easter Gospel,” Volodya said to me, “the better we like it. I
was in a Moscow church where they sang the Gospel in twelve languages. It makes
the whole world present.”

As
I stood in the sanctuary my eyes often rested on the icon of Mary with the
Protecting Veil on the wall above the altar. Yes, I thought, she is not only
the mother of Jesus but the mother of all believers. If we want, we can let her
drape us in her protecting veil, the veil of God’s love, the only real security
we have, the only indestructible wall.

After
the five-hour service — vespers, Easter proclamation, morning prayer,
Eucharist — the crowd outside parted to form a pathway about two yards wide
which was lined with baskets full of food, each basket dominated by the Easter
bread and lit by a candle struggling against the wind. There was still no hint
of dawn in the sky. A priest lavishly dowsed every basket with water blessed at
the Easter service, at the same time showering everything and everyone. So many
people were there to have their Easter baskets blessed that the circles kept
reforming. It took more than an hour for the four priests, working in turns, to
bless every basket.

Even
then the night was far from over. Next came a big meal. While the congregation
walked back to the tables in their own homes, the priests and staff of the
parish went into an old one-storey wooden building that clung precariously to
the edge of the hill, the parish house, where meat and home-made sausage and
Easter eggs and Easter bread awaited us. We remained at the table until about
8:00 in the morning.

It
wasn’t only food but drink — vodka, wine, Russian soft drinks and Pepsi Cola
(the brand name in cyrillic letters and the contents bottled under US license
in the USSR). There were many toasts, including some to me and some to world
peace, which I momentarily represented.

At
some point I looked at all these men and women crowded around the table,
laughing and telling stories, and found myself overcome by love for them, and
stunned at the thought that they would be likely casualties in another world
war. One of the people at the table was the choir director, who wore a well-tailored
grey suit and had the look of an old English gentleman. Perhaps because he
found out I sing in a choir and that two of my sons do also, there was a
particular sense of connection between us. Before we parted this older man wept
on my shoulder. I cried as well.

I
wrote a message in the parish guest book. It has been little written in since
it was started in 1974. The last entry before mine was from a group of British
pilgrims that came to Kiev in 1984. Then I was given several loaves of Easter
bread, a sack of beautifully colored Easter eggs and an arm-full of flowers. As
we left, I noticed people were already arriving for the morning service. The
dawn had broken.

Utterly
exhausted, Volodya and I went back to the hotel to sleep, but before going to
my room I gave the woman at the desk on our floor some of the Easter eggs and
one of the loaves of Easter bread. Overcoming worry that a religious greeting
might offend her, I said, “Christos Voskresye!” She smiled and replied,
“Veyeastino voskresye!”

Kiev,
19 April, part two: After a nap and a
meal, we went to Kiev’s oldest surviving church, the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom)
Cathedral. It is a building inspired by what was once the church of Hagia
Sophia (still existing but now a mosque) in Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Kiev’s
Hagia Sophia, dedicated in 1037, stands in a walled compound of ancient
buildings. Though now a museum, the cathedral remains a remarkable building,
and a lucky one at that despite the liturgical vacuum inside. Surviving all the
wars and catastrophes of the last 950 years, it is not only intact but
unspoiled.

“Our
city has had many uninvited visitors,” said Fr. Boris. “In the Thirteenth
Century, the Tartars conquered Kiev and enslaved the survivors. There were only
two-hundred houses left standing. Nearly all the churches were destroyed,
including the Church of the Holy Virgin, the first stone church built after
Kiev’s conversion. In later centuries the Poles, Lithuanians and Germans have
been here. The Tartars and Germans were the most merciless. Our city has been
under the rule of others for at least two hundred years of its history. We had
many defeats, but some victories too. In 1709, in this church, Peter the Great
celebrated his triumph in the Battle of Poltava over Charles XII and the
Swedish army.”

Mosaics
and frescoes dating from the time the church was built are still to be seen,
including a large mosaic of Mary that dominates the nave. It is the image of
Mary called the Indestructible Wall. She is wearing royal purple robes and
stands against a background of luminous gold with her hands raised in a
priestly gesture of prayer and blessing.

Once
one of Europe’s largest buildings, the cathedral is a house of many mansions.
We spent more than an hour exploring it, finding level upon level, hidden
stairways, balconies, new rooms and halls suddenly appearing. The cathedral
gives the impression of being infinite in size, a model of heaven. Its thirteen
cupolas represent Jesus and the apostles.

We
paused at the tomb of Vladimir’s son, Yaroslav the Wise, who presided over the
building of Hagia Sophia. He was supreme sovereign of Russian lands until his
death in 1054. “It is said that Yaroslav often read until late into the night,”
Volodya mentioned. “He founded a school for five-hundred students.”

We
went on to St. Andrew’s, a small Baroque church rising to a dramatic height on
the brow of a steep hill. One of the many casualties of the Khrushchev period,
it was closed is 1962, as was the associated seminary. The painting of the
iconostasis is more Italian than Russian. St. Andrew’s is, architecturally,
just barely a Russian church. Now one of the treasures of Kiev, it must have
been a rude shock to traditionalists when it first opened for worship in 1761.

We
proceeded to the monument to Prince Vladimir on the edge of the hill where Kiev
took root. Vladimir is shown holding aloft a cross.

“It
was Vladimir’s grandmother, Olga, who wanted Russia to be Christian,” Fr. Boris
said, “but it was Vladimir that made Russia Christian. Without Olga perhaps it
wouldn’t have happened. In the Russian Church we call her Equal of the
Apostles. The ancient chronicles speak of her as ‘the dawn in the morning that
announces the sun.’ On her feast day we sing, ‘Having covered herself with the
wings of prudence, she flew above the visible creatures; having sought God and
the Creator and having found him, she was reborn by baptism. Having tasted of
the tree of life, she is forever incorruptible.’”

In
the Primary Chronicle of early Russian history, the Tale of Bygone Times
compiled by the Kievan monk, St. Nestor, Vladimir is presented as a ruler who
knew that the time had come to embrace a religious tradition of world standing.
Taking great care to make the right choice, he sent emissaries to investigate
the religions of neighboring countries. They went to synagogues, mosques, and
to both Latin and Byzantine Christian churches.

Receiving
Vladimir’s representatives in Constantinople, the Patriarch ordered the clergy
assembled in Hagia Sophia for a festive service. Incense filled the air. Choirs
sang. According to Nestor’s Chronicle, the emissaries wrote to Vladimir:

We knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth, for on
earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss how to
describe it. We only know that God dwells among these people and that their
services are fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. We can never forget
that beauty.

As
much as in the water of the Dnieper, in those clouds of incense in
Constantinople, Russia became Orthodox.

With
Vladimir’s statue behind us, we went down the steep embankment past young
couples enjoying the spring weather Easter had brought to the city. The path
ended at a spot, marked by a second monument, where a small stream flows into
the Dnieper. On a June day in 988, the people of Kiev, carrying banners and
icons, went in procession from the Church of the Prophet Elijah to this very
place and were baptized. “Joy was seen throughout heaven at the sight of so
many souls being saved,” Nestor records in the Chronicle. That same summer
Christian conversion spread to the cities of Novgorod, Rostov, Vladimir and
Belgorod.

“Before
his conversion Vladimir was far from a saintly man,” Fr. Boris said. “The
Chronicle says he was ‘a man insatiable in vice.’ But after his conversion he
became renowned for his care of the poor, of orphans and the sick. The palace
gates were opened to the hungry. He built hospices for the aged. He opposed
torture and execution of criminals. We regard him as a saint, not only for
opening the door of faith for us but for the life he led as a believer. One of
the cathedrals of Kiev is named after him.”

Fr.
Boris is named after one of Vladimir’s sons. “Prince Boris and his younger
brother, Prince Gleb,” said Fr. Boris, “were both murdered by an ambitious
elder brother, Sviatopolk. Neither resisted their brother. They were the first
to be canonized in the Russian church. We call them ‘Passion Bearers’.”

The
Dnieper, Europe’s third longest river, rises in a peat bog in the hills
northwest of Smolensk and, 1400 miles to the south, empties into the Black Sea.
The river was a major link in a system of waterways providing a route “from the
Varangians to the Greeks.” Artifacts unearthed by archaeologists working along
the Dnieper come from Swedish as well as Byzantine sources. Kiev, at the
river’s middle point, stands at the heart of the main highway of Russian
development.

“According
to legend,” Fr. Boris said, “in the First Century the river was the route
followed by one of the Apostles, St. Andrew, who paused where we are standing
and prophesied, ‘Do you see these hills? The grace of God will shine on them. A
great city will be built with many churches praising God within its walls.’
Then he planted a cross on the hilltop above us where the Monastery of the
Caves was founded nine centuries later. In the statue, the cross Andrew left is
in Vladimir’s arms.”

Following
the stream to the banks of the Dnieper, we went on to a place nearby where a
monument has been erected commemorating the sister and three brothers who
founded Kiev. The sister — young, daring, unarmed — stands on the prow of a
Viking-like long boat, her cloak flying in the wind, her arms out as if she is
about to leap into the air. Her three brothers stand in the back of the boat,
armed, fierce, searching the shoreline. It is from Ki, oldest of the brothers,
that Kiev takes its name.

Climbing
up the steep hill beneath the monastery, we stopped on the way by a large bed
of red tulips where a soldier and his girl friend let me take their photo. She
gave me her address, asking that I send her a print. Further on we came upon
several boys on skate boards skillfully weaving through an obstacle course of
empty Pepsi bottles, the sort of scene I associate more with California than
the Ukraine. At last, out of breath and tired, we reached the walls of the
Monastery of the Caves, its golden cupolas gleaming in the late afternoon
sunlight. We will visit it tomorrow.

Kiev,
Easter Monday, April 20: On our way to the
Convent of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God (Pokrovskye), we talked
about the convent’s name, a title of Mary used by many Russian Orthodox
churches. “We received it from the Greeks and it has become one of the main
feast days in our Church,” Fr. Boris said, “but over the centuries it disappeared
from Greek church life, perhaps because of living under Moslem domination. It
survives only in Russia, especially here in the Ukraine.”

The
convent’s main church is huge and wide open, unencumbered by walls and pillars.
It is beautifully painted from floor to ceiling with frescoes of saints and
biblical scenes. Olga and Vladimir were painted on the wall up by the high
balcony where the main part of the nuns’ choir was singing.

Liturgically,
the second day of Easter is hardly different than the first, except everyone
has had a good night’s sleep and so continues the celebration more rested. Fr.
Boris was one of the celebrating priests, assisting Kiev’s Metropolitan,
Filaret, who had come to share Easter with the nuns. Volodya and I were led to
a choir stall. It is raised, so I had a good view of the congregation. As
usual, women were in the majority, but there were older men and quite a
sprinkling of children who had come with their mothers or grandparents. Young
adults were the rarities. Easter Monday isn’t a holiday. Students had returned
to their classrooms and working-age people were back at their jobs.

One
of the old men wore a monk’s fur cap. The Monastery of the Caves, Kiev’s only
religious community for men, was closed in Khrushchev’s time, but reportedly
some of the monks remain in Kiev and continue living the monastic life. I
assume this was one of them. He had a face of the most astonishing innocence
with very open, undefended eyes. He gazed freely at whatever interested him —
for a time, at me. I thought at first he might be annoyed by my camera and my
obvious interest in him but his face was absolutely calm with a gentleness of
countenance I have never seen before, not in Russia, not anywhere.

About
70 of the convent’s 95 members were in the church. Others were out in the
carillon ringing bells that made me want to dance. (Later I noticed a
professional sound engineer with a directional microphone down by the carillon
taping the music; the Soviet record company, Melodya, has produced a number of
recordings of church bells as well as church choral music.) Other nuns were in
the kitchens preparing the meal.

There
was a procession around the church differing from the procession of Easter
night only in that this was in bright sunlight. The nuns carried banners of
Mary and Jesus, and a large Easter bread, a candle in a glass chamber, and a
cross. The bells were ringing continuously and holy water flying in every
direction. Over and over we were singing the exclamations of Easter: “Christ is
risen! Truly he is risen!”

I
last watched Metropolitan Filaret celebrate the Liturgy at the Danilov
Monastery in Moscow during the Peace Forum in February. His manner refreshed me
then and did so again today. Every gesture is done with such attention and
gentleness. It is part of the ritual to kiss each garment before it is put on.
He does this with the devotion or a mother kissing a child on forehead at bed
time. Every motion underlines the fact that we are in sacred space and sacred
time.

One
of the deacons assisting the Metropolitan, a big man with a dark brown beard,
has a voice that can hardly be less immense and rich than Caruso’s. When he
steps out from the Sanctuary and sings “Wisdom! Be Attentive!”, it is the voice
of the Archangel Gabriel, able to raise the dead. There was one nun with a
voice to match but of nightingale quality.

In
the afternoon, after lunch at the convent with the Metropolitan, we went to the
Percherskaya Lavra, the Monastery of the Caves, the first monastic community in
Russia though at present a museum. [photo of the gate]

Unfortunately,
the main church, the Eleventh Century Cathedral of the Assumption, was
dynamited by Germans soldiers shortly after the 791-day Occupation of Kiev
began in 1941. All but one corner of the church was reduced to rubble.
Restoration of the huge building is now underway.

We
spent a long time in one church that survived the Occupation. A Russian tourist
group was in it when we arrived, admiring four large frescoes by Ishkevich and
Popov that show the Nativity, Jesus multiplying the loaves, Jesus preaching the
Sermon on the Mount, and the Resurrection. The guide was talking, and there was
a lot of moving about, every sound magnified and sifted together in the rich
acoustic of the church. But when the group left there was a profound, sweet
silence. Fr. Boris whispered: “Quietness! Can you hear the quietness? It’s
unbelievable!”

We
went down the hillside until we came to a small church where a stairway
descends into the earth. Thus we entered into the monastery’s famous caves
where thousands are buried, mainly monks, more than a hundred of whom have been
canonized. The bodies of the saints, in glass-topped coffins, have mummified.
The visitor sees the parchment-like hands, while the rest of the body is under
silk cloth. The air is cool but not cold, and very fresh and sweet.

For
tourists, the caves, with all its bones and mummies, provide a fascinating look
at death. For believers the caves are an underground city of saints. One of
those buried in the caves is the chronicler and biographer, St. Nestor, who
died in 1113. A guide book notes, “The whole Orthodox world bows before the
relics of the saints of the monastery; in times past and today, their blessing
emanates undiminished upon all who come to their tombs in faith and love.”xxii

In
former times monks were guides and visitors found their way with candles. The
monks are gone and now the caves are lit by electric lights, but prayer
continues in the caves. Many pause and cross themselves at each saint’s body.
We stopped and prayed with one couple, members of Fr. Boris’ parish, who were
quietly singing Easter hymns before the body of St. Anthony, who, with St.
Theodosius, founded the monastery in 1051.

“Public
prayer didn’t used to be allowed,” said Fr. Boris, “but now they don’t stop it.
We would say to them, why not? If it is just words, what difference is it
whether it is the words of a tourist guide or words of prayer from a believer?
What difference if it is only words? So what does it matter?”

The
monastery is on two adjacent hill tops, the higher hill containing the larger
and older part of the monastery. This was made into a museum many years ago,
with the monks confined to the lower hill. But in 1962 the monks were ordered
to leave altogether and the buildings on the lower hill left to rot. The church
is completely decayed inside, but restoration has begun. The new roof is
finished and has gleaming golden cupolas. Perhaps the millennium of the church
will be the occasion for the Kiev authorities to allow monastic life to resume
at least on this hilltop.

We
went to St. Vladimir’s Cathedral for the evening service, always a special one
on Easter Monday, with most of the priests of the city coming to greet the
Metropolitan. There were thirty priests and at least five-thousand people. It
is a large church, built in the late Nineteenth Century but in the Byzantine
tradition and decorated in the most captivating way. Foremost is the famous
painting of Mary by Victor Vasnetsov. Both Mary and her child seem to be
looking directly at each person in the church. Jesus’ arms are open. It is
quite an experience to stand in front of this — one sees why this is among of
the most frequently seen icons in Russian homes.

The
high point of the service was the reflection on Easter by Metropolitan Filaret
delivered as he stood at the center of the iconostasis. Speaking without notes,
he started off by pushing away the praise which had just been heaped on him in
a speech from his coadjutor bishop.

“The
Holy Fathers said you have to ignore praise — it can lead you the wrong way,”
said the Metropolitan. “I have to hear only the good wishes underneath what my
brother said. Good wishes are nice and we all are glad to have them, but it’s
very important never to believe you are more important or higher than anyone
else. I have to say this to my brother bishop and to all of you.

“It
is Easter and I am thinking about what has inspired believers in our church
during the last one thousand years. Today is exactly the day when we must ask
the question, like believers before us: Why are we living on the earth? Why are
we working hard? Why are we trying to have a good time? Why are we suffering?
What is the meaning of life?

“There
are many theories, many explanations from all the philosophers, but none of
them fulfill us. All of them stop at the point of death. But our soul longs to
keep living. It wants to be eternal. It wants to live without end. Life has
meaning only if there is eternal life. If there isn’t eternal life, no matter
how beautiful your life, at the end it is just poor life.

“It’s
a pity sometimes to stand before a dead person who worked hard in life, did
good works, suffered, was in many battles, but in the end saw no meaning, and
he is dead and no one can help him. Great Solomon wisely said that the living
dog is more blessed than the dead human.

“So
we are happy, we are blessed, because we believe in eternal life. We know that
the life of people is not life only until death. The soul doesn’t disappear. It
lives. It lives forever. This is so whether you believe it or not and it is
true whether you want it or not, true whether you are a believer or an
unbeliever. So no matter what kind of life you lived before death, you enter
eternal life, and not only your soul but your body. We come into eternal life
in both body and soul.

“Today
we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and we rejoice in it. And we see
in it not only his resurrection but our resurrection. The Resurrection
of Jesus Christ is the same as our resurrection. We believe that. We believe
that in Christ each one of us will stand up.

“Many
people do not believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ or in the
Resurrection of anyone. I don’t want to give them proof or argue with them. The
main thing about their conviction, the thing their unbelief is founded on, is
that it’s impossible for a dead person to come back to life. How can it happen?
How can something that is just dust and bones live again? And what about bodies
that are now only ashes? Or were cut into many pieces? Or were eaten by beasts
or fish? How can such people’s bodies be made whole and come back to life? Our
brain can’t overcome this dilemma. How is it possible?

“But
then we can ask another question: What about everything that exists? All this
beauty? There are so many things we don’t understand and can’t explain. Most
things we can’t explain. What do you think? Isn’t this huge miracle we live in
as big a miracle as the resurrection? Do you think creation is easier than resurrection?
If God is strong enough to create everything from nothing, to create the whole
world and the whole universe, do you think it is difficult to resurrect what he
has already created?

“So
don’t be discouraged by anyone who says it’s impossible. God has the power to
create everything.

“So,
brothers and sisters, we believe in eternal life. But it isn’t an easy belief.
It is a belief that gives us responsibilities. We have to realize that each
person, whether or not he wants God, must answer to God for his life — what he
did, what didn’t do. He must stand judgment.

“It
is a weakness not to believe in eternal life. Even if you don’t believe, it is
no justification when you stand before God with sins and horrible deeds. Don’t
imagine that you will be unjudgeable.

“Our
people have lived by great ideals. The big ideal that has been living in our
people for a thousand years is to live in God’s truth. Not human truth. God’s
truth. Our ancestors mostly wanted to live according to God’s truth. They
suffered greatly. Many terrible things happened. There were dreadful persons.
But somehow, no matter what sorrows there were, they were still trying to live
according to God’s truth.

“We
need this too. God’s truth has to lead us. We have to have a spiritual life
even if we are surrounded by an unspiritual life. We need to have Christian
families even if we are surrounded by families that are breaking down. We need
to work hard and sincerely, not for praise or money, but for the heart and soul
of our neighbors. We have to work for our people.

“Let
us not think about bread for ourselves. Bread is something we need, yes, but
the person who thinks about bread for himself has lost the spiritual dimension
of life. But if he thinks of bread for his neighbors, then he is leading a
spiritual life — a life of love, a life of caring for others. This is the
spiritual life.

“The
Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only a joy for us, it is a great
responsibility and a great task. It leads us to prepare for the Last Judgment.
Let the Resurrection fill our hearts with belief in eternal life so that truth
can take root in our hearts. Let us not only think about it in our minds but
feel it in our hearts.”

He
was silent and then the people responded in one voice, “Spasi gospodi!”
— God save you! The Russian word for thank-you — spasiba — has the
same root. Then came a time to greet the Metropolitan. Everyone in the
congregation waited their turn. This was still going on when we left an hour
later. [photo looking down on the Metropolitan and crowd from above?]

Kiev,
21 April: Last night I noticed two girls
who brought flowers to Metropolitan Filaret. I discovered today they have Fr.
Boris as their godfather. Fr. Boris says, “Nicholas, their father, has sat at
my table many times. He used to throw a lot of snow at my wisdom! He and his
wife, Tayisa, wanted children but a long time passed and there were none. Then
she had a daughter, Maryechka, who is ten now, and a year later there was
Olga.”

We
spent much of the day at the Florovsky Monastery, a baroque place, quite
simple, rather poor. It is a community of eighty nuns, some very young, some
ancient. On a wall near the church’s entrance, there is a life-sized icon of
St. Seraphim of Sarov on the rock in the forest where he prayed for a thousand
days. Many people kiss the icon before entering the church.

Again
we were with Metropolitan Filaret. A large crowd was waiting outside the
church, bells ringing for him as soon as his car came through the monastery
gate. A nun stood inside the church door to offer him the traditional symbols
of welcome, bread and salt. The sisters sang a special song.

Hanging
from the ceiling of the church was a large candelabra filled with burning
candles. There is a large painting on the church wall of Mary, Joy of the Sorrowful.
She is crowned and has a crowned baby Jesus on her lap, while around them all
sorts of people are on their knees. White streamers represent their prayers.

In
the Orthodox Liturgy, the entire congregation sings the Beatitudes, the Credo,
and the Our Father. This is done with a drum-beat, heart-beat rhythm. No matter
how big, the church always seems too small to contain the sound. These are
among the moments in the Liturgy when a visitor experiences tangibly,
physically, the strength of belief. Apart from the kettle-drum impact of each
syllable, the chant is similar to Gregorian chant used in monasteries of the
Catholic Church in the west. I sang along quietly with the bits of Slavonic I
have learned or can roughly imitate.

I
noticed the faithful bow their heads at certain points in the liturgy, for
example when the gospel is read; also when the priest says, “Mir sviem!”
This means, “Peace be with you!” There is an exchange between the priest and
the congregation when he comes out from the sanctuary shortly before the canon
prayer and says, “Forgive me, my children!” The people respond, “God will
forgive!”

Though
the congregation was mainly old women, there were younger people in the back of
the church who had arrived just as the service was about to start. Children
were mainly with their grandparents, though later in the service, younger
mothers made their way to the front so that their children could receive
communion. While adults rarely receive communion in most Orthodox churches, the
infants and children receive often.

The
children always catch a lot of my attention. They are usually quite focused on
the Liturgy, watching everything and crossing themselves. If they are in the
same family, they often hold hands or rest against each other. Today there were
two sisters at the front, both in old clothing — I am tempted to say poor, but
in fact well-kept hand-me-down clothing.

The
nuns wear a beehive-shaped head covering. Their faces and hands are all that
isn’t covered. Some of them prayed the rosary during the liturgy. I noticed a
variety of rosaries, not only the black silk ones I’m familiar with but other
colors, and in one case a rosary of silver beads with a magenta tassel — this
in the hands of one of the elderly sisters.

Tolya,
a photographer, whom Volodya and I met yesterday and stayed up with last night,
was also at the monastery. He is tall, with a face several days removed from a
razor. He spent the Liturgy photographing shy nuns, something few photographers
would dare and which the nuns normally wouldn’t allow, but Tolya has the
Metropolitan’s blessing and takes pictures with a quiet authority that matches
a Russian crossing himself. He got right up in the choir box on the right side
of the church, set up his tripod though there wasn’t much space for him, still
less for his tripod, and spent two hours photographing the nuns singing.

One
jarring event in the Liturgy was the Metropolitan turning away one of those who
had lined up to receive communion. Perhaps because she had such an angry expression,
the Metropolitan asked her something — Fr. Boris guessed it was to find out if
she had been to confession. She responded with an abrupt gesture that said No.
Then she walked away, furious.

Walking
out of the church through the sacristy, one of the nuns asked to see my Nikon
camera. It was clear she had never before had a close look at such a machine.
She held it every which way. To show how it was used, I took a photo of another
nun standing in the adjacent doorway.

We
were invited to eat lunch at the convent. Metropolitan Filaret was at the head
of the table and at his side another bishop, Basil, who was born in the Ukraine
but left with his family just after the Revolution. For many years the United
States has been his home — he is in the Soviet Union only for the third time
since he was a child, and these few visits only in the last few years. He is
tall and has a flowing white beard. His face is austere but welcoming.

Apart
from his own snow white beard, Metropolitan Filaret has a child’s face, hardly
lined, with clear, expectant eyes that have a quiet curiosity in them, alert
but not prying. He has a remarkable stillness. Nothing about him indicates
hurry. He doesn’t play the part of the consequential executive with urgent
matters to tend to at his desk.

The
table conversation was on many topics — the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, the
AIDS epidemic now beginning to find victims in the USSR, factory-raised
chickens who spend their lives imprisoned in tiny cages, the history of
atheism, Baptist influence on Russia, Peter the Great, and western countries in
which credit cards have inaugurated debt as a lifestyle.

“People
may not believe in eternal life,” said Metropolitan Filaret, “but they
certainly believe in eternal debt!” People are in debt, but nations even more
in debt, mainly because of the costs of the arms race. The Metropolitan
remarked that while the US and the USSR had been preoccupied with military
competition, Japan — freed from militarization by the treaty it signed at the
end of the war — had been producing things people want and can use, and that
the Japanese economy was flourishing.

“Food,”
he said, “is becoming another factory-product that looks better than it tastes,
like American strawberries, which are a pale imitation of real garden
strawberries. Now food, even though it looks good, can have things in it that
are bad for you.”

In
the afternoon we first went to Babi Yar, a ravine west of Kiev where between
100,000 and 200,000 people, mainly Jews, were executed by the German army. In
the sixties Yevtushenko wrote a poem that began with the comment that there was
no monument at Babi Yar. Yevtushenko was revolted with the renaissance of
anti-semitism and identified himself with its victims:

In
1976, perhaps in answer to Yevtushenko’s celebrated poem, a monument was
erected commemorating all those murdered here. The figures are shown in the
last moments of life. An old woman stood next to us crying, her face buried in
her hands.

Then
we went to the church of St. Cyril of Alexandria, a Twelfth Century building
still possessing many of the original frescoes, but also graced with a
remarkable iconostasis done by Mikhael Vrubel in 1884. In Vrubel’s work, Jesus
and Mary are unmistakably Jewish: semitic features, and skin many shades darker
than Ukrainian. It must have enraged anti-Semites. How appropriate that it is
near Babii Yar.

I
had an hour in the Russian Museum. The painting that impressed me most was Ilya
Repin’s life-sized portrait of a nun — a woman of stunning intelligence,
faith, and modesty. [photo?] Reproductions in books hadn’t prepared me
for the actual painting.xxiv Near it was Nikolai Yarshenko’s painting of a woman
student walking through the rain in Leningrad. She could be the nun, but some
years earlier in life. What immense resolve in her face! One doesn’t sense
faith — or at least not religious faith — but perhaps a conviction that she
will spend her life working for justice.xxv

There
is a painting by Nikolai Ghe of Christ’s face while he was being crucified —
white face, red and blue bruises in the face — all in abrupt strokes as if the
painting itself were done on the cross rather than an easel. Ghe’s Christ
suffers pain of body and spirit as deeply as anyone who has ever know agony.

There
is a painting by Lerov of a Holy Fool, life-size and life-like. He is a
grinning man, in bare feet and gray rags, with a large iron cross around his neck
standing before a broken fence. It is winter. The sun is about to rise and
there are birds in the air — as if to say, here is someone people call insane,
a man living a bird’s life outside the usual fences, a life given meaning and
warmth only because of the resurrection that is suggested by the sun just
beginning to rise.

Another
Repin painting is of St. Nicholas. No Santa Claus, he is in his bishop’s
vestments stopping the execution of three condemned people. He has put his hand
on the blade of the executioner’s sword while a man kneels prayerfully on the
ground, waiting to die. The powerful, pirate-like executioner is stunned. In
the background there is a Roman legionnaire and a standard representing the
power of the state. Nicholas was, no doubt, a kind of holy fool too, getting in
the way of things, calling on the executioner to disobey those who gave him his
orders, and in the process risking his own life. It is an image of a
Christ-like church that risks everything for the victims.xxvi

Also
by Repin is a study of the crucifixion. One of the thieves is naked and in
agony on the cross, another is being bloodily nailed to the cross. Jesus,
standing with dignity under a massive crown of thorns, is being stripped. There
is a group of several women on the left pleading, like Nicholas, with a soldier
but the soldier has thrown out his hands in such a way that you can hear him
say, “What can I do? I’m only following orders.”xxvii

Volodya
and I spent Tuesday evening at Fr. Boris’ house in Podol, the lower part of
Kiev. Going by tram, we walked up a dirt road to a particular gateway, passed
through a small garden, patted the dog, and entered an old wooden house in
which the floors seem to follow the curve of the hill. Lydia, his wife, was
busy finishing a salad. Their ten-year-old son, Sevya, greeted us in a
tee-shirt that said BAN THE BOMB in English.

The
porch has been windowed in to become a dining room. The late afternoon light
illumined a long table covered with Easter eggs, Easter bread, all sorts of
sausages, sliced meat, sliced fish, stuffed eggs made to look like red-topped
mushrooms, and salads. There were many bottles — mineral water, Pepsi Cola,
several varieties of vodka, cognac from Armenia, Russian champagne, and wine
both home-made and from Ukrainian vineyards. Still there was room for flowers
and other decorations. [photo of Fr. Boris and Lydia at their table, or just
the table]

Lydia
has black hair and a round, open face. She and Fr. Boris gave us a tour of the
ramshackle house that has no right angles. It’s a pity the old houses in this
neighborhood are slated for destruction as the expanding modern city chews up
village fragments that survive. Fr. Boris and Lydia have been here twelve years
and hope for another two before the house succumbs to architectural euthanasia.
Under two icons that face their bed, I noticed a beautiful Palekh box similar
to the one in our bedroom in Holland. I felt more at home than they could imagine.

Music,
provided most of the evening by a cassette tape recorder, ranged from Easter
hymns sung by a Russian Orthodox choir to Johnny Cash and American black
spirituals. Here in Kiev we were hearing Barbara Hendricks singing, “I’m so
glad I got my religion in time!”

We
were joined by a widowed priest, Alexander Kubelius, and another priest and his
wife, Nicholas and Tayisa Zapparozhetz, and their two daughters, Maryechka and
Olga, the same ones who gave flowers to Metropolitan Filaret on Monday. As at
the cathedral, both had ribbons in their hair and wore identical dresses. They
look like twins.

There
mother, Tayisa, has fair hair pulled straight back and shy eyes. She grew up in
the nearby Florovsky Convent where her father was priest. Her first thirty
years were largely spent at the convent. “It was better growing up in a convent
than anywhere I can imagine,” she said as we were eating Easter eggs and
sipping lemon vodka. “There were many children living there, or nearby, and we
could go where we liked, and we could go into the church anytime and pray. I
liked to get up at five in the morning so I could take part in the first prayer
service, especially on days when I was preparing for Holy Communion.” Having
married a priest, she isn’t so far from the convent life even now.

Fr.
Nicholas is a huge man, with a thick, close-cropped brown beard, many gold
teeth, and a gift as a story teller. Among the drinks on the table was a large
pitcher of homemade kvas. Noticing how much I like it, Fr. Nicholas told
a story about a wealthy man who was passing through a Ukrainian village and
stayed for the night in a peasant’s house. Amazed at how good the kvas
was, he asked a child at the table if there was enough for him to bring a few
bottles home. “Oh yes, sir, lots and lots. I know because the other day, when a
mouse fell into it, Mother got in the vat to fetch it out and the kvas
was right up to her waist.”

Borscht
was served, which inspired Nicholas to tell a story about a man who came to a
certain house to beg for food. “Well,” said the woman at the door, “how do you
like day-old soup?” “That would be fine.” “Okay, then come back tomorrow.”

Nicholas
told a story of his childhood. “I was watching my mother color Easter eggs. It
was the final hours before Easter after all those weeks of fasting. So many
days without eating one egg! At that moment nothing seemed so delicious as a
hard boiled egg. I asked her if I couldn’t eat any eggs that happened to be
cracked? Absolutely not. Soon afterward the rest of the family went to church
for the Easter vigil, but I had no shoes and I was very little so I had to stay
at home. Before leaving, my mother warned me about the eggs, ‘If you eat even
one egg before Easter, you will die.’ I struggled hard against temptation for
about an hour, but when I noticed an egg with a broken shell, I lost the
struggle. After swallowing the last bite, it hit me that I would soon die, so I
reasoned, ‘Why not eat some more? It no longer makes any difference.’ I managed
to eat ten, then I lay down, waiting for death. In fact, the way my stomach
felt, it was obvious death was near. This is how my family found me when they
got home, me at death’s door, and ten Easter eggs missing. But I was lucky.
Mother felt she couldn’t punish me, it being Easter. For three days I was a
prisoner in the house. But I lived!”

After
hearing about a half dozen such stories, I said that it seemed that to be a
priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, you had to be able to make people laugh.
“At least to be married to a priest,” Lydia responded, “you need a sense of
humor!”

Fr.
Boris poured some special vodka made with honey. We all tasted it carefully.
“There is no such thing as bad vodka,” said Fr. Boris. “There is never a bad
meal when there is vodka on the table,” Fr. Nicholas added. Then he told a
vodka story: “At the cost of millions of dollars, the United Nations finally
got a translating computer. The day came when at last it was installed. The
press was there. Many television cameras. To demonstrate the brilliant computer,
the Secretary General decided to show how it could translate from Russian to
English. He chose the Russian words for ‘The Spirit is willing but the flesh is
weak.’ This was no problem for the computer. Immediately it printed out in
English: ‘The vodka is agreeable but the meat isn’t so good.’

Mention
of the United Nations inspired Fr. Nicholas to talk about destruction of the
environment. “Only man is a threat to nature,” he said. “All these things
people do that damage the earth! Computers and atom bombs are from the devil!
Once the lion and the lamb could dwell together in peace and now everything is
being poisoned to death. Nature calls us to help her. We Christians must say,
‘Come God to save us.’” Thinking of how much I depend on a computer in my own work,
I said that sometimes computers aren’t so bad. “Maybe you’re right,” he said
apologetically. “I still live in an age when the atom wasn’t divided.”

Fr.
Alexander spoke about being in the army and how important it had been to meet
people from different religions. At that time he was just beginning to be an
Orthodox believer. “In fact, in those early days of belief, I was very rigid
about my religious views and one night got into a big argument with another
soldier about the Mother of God. But the other soldier finally said, ‘I am your
brother, a Baptist. Let’s not quarrel.’ And that was the end of it. We became
close friends.”

He
talked about war toys and how important it is for parents not to bring them
into the home. There was a baptism he did recently where a toy gun had been
brought along by one of the children. He asked the parents to take it away
before going on with the sacrament. “Symbols are so important. Not only
Christians, no one should buy such symbols. In fact they shouldn’t be made.”

Fr.
Nicholas told a story about how Peter the Great had liked statues of Roman
deities. “But finally he got rid of them because a certain bishop wouldn’t
visit him so long as such statues were in the palace. Whenever I go to
someone’s apartment to do a baptism, if I see such an idol, even though the
people living there consider it as a decoration, I ask them to get rid of it. I
tell them this story and I say, ‘I am not a bishop and you aren’t Peter the
Great, but we can follow their example.’”

“Ukrainians
are a singing people,” Volodya had told me on the flight to Kiev. “They sing
even more than Russians do.” As it got dark, and when most of the eating was
over, Fr. Nicholas began to sing and everyone joined in — even me, as best I
could, as the tunes were catchy and I could pick up some of the refrains. It
was wonderful, soulful music. Ukranian ballads are gentle, romantic, poignant
and long, and are sung from the heart.

After
a lot of singing and more drinking, Fr. Nicholas got quite grave and said to
me, “I want to say to our guest, if you think perhaps priests are too
light-hearted in the Russian Orthodox Church, and I admit sometimes we are,
remember that in Lent we don’t even watch the news on television. For seven
weeks no meat, no milk products. This is our tradition — it isn’t something we
are proud of but it is the way we live. We keep it strictly. We all pray, the
children too. We don’t make them. We just do it. We want to do it. And the
children come to father or mother and ask them for a blessing. But now it’s
Easter, and this is Easter life!”

We
went downstairs to a room where there was a piano. Tayisa and her daughters
played, and Fr. Nicholas, despite the smallness of the room, not only sang but
danced in a way that reminded me of Tevya in Fiddler on the Roof. We
sang a final prayer before the icons on the porch and made our way home by
tram.

Kiev,
April 22: Fr. Boris isn’t impressed with
the practice in churches in the west of receiving communion with very little or
no special preparation. “In the Orthodox Church we ask people to receive
communion at least four times a year and we ask them to prepare beforehand for
at least two days. It has to be something special. We need to come to communion
with a sense of awe, even fear, fear of God. We say to people in the liturgy,
‘With fear of God, and belief, draw near.’ In preparation we don’t only want
people to fast but to pray frequently, pray on the tram, pray while waiting in
lines. We ask people to come to morning or evening prayer in the church.”

We
tried to see the Mother Superior at the Pokrovskye Convent but she was away. I
did manage a brief conversation with Sr. Elykonida, who has been there 37
years, is a member of the choir, and a reader in church. I asked how the
convent had changed since she joined the community. “Hardly any change at all!
We are living and praying now and we were living and praying then.”

And
that was that. Yet she said in a few words what is and was and always will be
at the center of monastic life.

“She
is a real monk,” said Fr. Boris. “She doesn’t like limelight. She doesn’t want
to give a speech and it is no honor to be interviewed by a journalist. And she
hadn’t been blessed by her superior to talk with you. But perhaps you would
have done better with her if you hadn’t said hello. Never say hello or good
morning during Easter. In Easter season, Easter is every day, not only Easter
Sunday. You have to say, ‘Christ is risen!’”

In
the afternoon Fr. Boris, Lydia, Volodya and I went to see Pokayaniye
(“Repentance”). Last February, in Moscow, I tried to get a ticket to see the
film. It was showing in seventeen cinemas around the city but tickets were
completely sold out. It was easier to see the Bolshoi Ballet. Tickets were
unavailable in Leningrad as well — Fr. Boris and I went to the opera. But here
Fr. Boris finally succeeded in getting tickets. Even then there were only a few
vacant seats in the theater despite the early hour and the fact that it was a
weekday. “It’s said that Gorbachev ordered enough copies of the film to be made
so that everyone will see it,” Volodya told me. If the rumor is true, Gorbachev
must be pleased.

The
film, directed by Tengiz Abuladze, was made in 1984 in Georgia, the Soviet
Republic where Stalin was born. It ended up on ice with all but a few prints
destroyed. That even one print survived is credited mainly to Eduard
Shevardnadze, who backed Abuladze in making the movie. At the time Shevardnadze
was First Secretary of the Communist Party in Georgia. Now he is Foreign
Minister of the USSR and one of those most identified with Gorbachev. Following
Gorbachev’s election and the subsequent overthrow of the Brezhnev-era old guard
in the film-makers’ union, Goskino, the film was finally released.

Ostensibly
about the mayor of a Georgian city, Repentance is really about Stalin.
The dictator is a parable-like figure named Varlam who not only resembles
Stalin but Hitler, Mussolini and Napoleon. Varlam is one of those people who,
even after death, have a continuing awful presence among the living, becoming
objects of veneration to those who are dazzled by cruelty and raw power. Their
death is a kind of nap. In one scene we see Varlam/Stalin waking up in a
lidless coffin, grinning dangerously at the camera, then rolling over to make
himself more comfortable.

After
Varlam’s burial his body, black boots and all, keeps re-appearing, propped up
in the garden of the family villa. Death seems unable to contain this man
responsible for the deaths of millions. The family, who thought they had seen
the last of the Great Man, become increasingly distressed and call in the
police to put an end to all these undesirable resurrections. A night watch in
the cemetery reveals that there is nothing magical about Varlam’s post-mortem
mobility. The daughter of two of his victims has been digging up the corpse and
is using it to haunt Varlam’s slick, modern, high-living descendants.

The
story centers on the parents of the grave-digger. We meet them earlier in their
lives, when their daughter was eight or nine. They are a young couple, both
artists. In our first glimpse of the couple their faces are lined with
apprehension as they watch Varlam give a speech from a balcony facing their
home. On a gallows in the background a vulture sits complacently on the cross
beam. In the sky, Varlam’s portrait is suspended from a balloon. (In fact there
were similar pictures of Stalin decorating the Soviet sky fifty years ago.)

The
man has a Christ-like face, the woman looks like Mary and wears a cross. In a
prophetic dream suffered by the mother she sees herself and her husband buried
in the earth. Only their faces are uncovered, their eyes open and alive.

The
couple are trying to save a local church that has been turned into a scientific
laboratory — Fr. Boris guessed it was meant to represent the huge Savior
Cathedral that once stood across the Moscow River from the Kremlin, now the
site of an outdoor swimming pool. The camera slowly explores the peeling
frescoes of biblical scenes before it discovers the shining apparatus of high
technology that has taken the place of worshippers.

Varlam,
flowers in hand, visits the artists’ home and seeks to win their support with
an excess of charisma. In fact Stalin occasionally sent flowers to those whom
he had added to his death list. Varlam pretends sympathy with their desire to
save old buildings, but after his departure, the church is burned and the two
artists — first the husband, then the wife — are swallowed up in the gulag.
We see the man again when he is dying under torture. As the camera closes in on
his suffering face, one realizes that it is also the face of Christ dying on
the cross.

There
is a heart-rending scene of his wife, warned that she is about to be arrested,
trying to escape with her daughter in the dead of night, but grabbed as she
steps out the door of their dingy flat.

The
couple’s daughter survives. By the time of Varlam’s death, she is devoted to
baking cakes modeled as churches, each steeple crowned with a golden baptismal
cross such as her mother wore. One of Varlam’s admirers in the film is a
curiously stunted man wearing an old soldiers’ uniform who, paying more
attention to the newspaper than what he is doing, takes the steeple from one of
her edible churches and, cross and all, stuffs it in his mouth. His eyes are
held by the headline announcing Varlam’s death.

The
film’s images have the brilliant clarity of dreams. In one scene people are
waiting in line at a prison gate to deliver letters to relatives. If a letter
is accepted, relief floods the face of the person who brought it. But for many
the voice behind the gate refuses the letter, saying only, “Left, no forwarding
address.” Those who wait know the awful meaning of the words. This is no
film-maker’s visualization of nightmares but simply how it was.

In
another scene several women are in a muddy timber yard searching the ends of
the logs. One fortunate woman finds her husband’s name and, weeping, caresses
the rough wood as if it were her husband’s face. Over supper I asked Fr. Boris
if this was a dream scene. “It was no dream,” Fr. Boris said. “It was common
for people to search among logs for names. Prisoners working in the forests
carved their names and dates as a sign that, at least until the date on the
log, they were still alive. What you saw happened many times.”

Repentance spans three generations. So little of the terrible truth
has reached the third generation that Varlam’s privileged grandson has no idea
of the horrors that are buried in the family past. His discovery of them leads
him to accuse his father, a powerful man living elegantly in his mansion. “You
don’t understand,” the father angrily tells the son, “you don’t know how it
was! We did our best!” The boy barricades himself in his room and shoots
himself.

His
death drives the father to repentance. He goes into the cellar of the house
where paintings that had belonged to the murdered young artists are stored. The
room is now a kind of chapel illumined by vigil candles. In this setting the
paintings resemble icons. Varlam’s son gazes at himself in a cracked mirror and
watches his own image dissolve into the face of Varlam leering at him, laughing
satanically. The image fades. In the darkness near the mirror a half-visible
figure silently raises a fish to his shadowed face — the face of Christ — and
eats it. In the darkness, in repentance, there is eucharist and forgiveness.

More
than anything else, this is a religious film. In the final scene we see an old
lady asking the woman who makes church-like cakes, “Does this street go to the
church?” “No, it is Varlam Street — a street named after Varlam can’t lead to
a church.” “What good,” asks the old lady, “is a street that doesn’t lead you
to a church?” The film ends as we watch this babushka hobbling down the barren
street.

Repentance is destined to be seen in many countries but only in the
Soviet Union can one see not only the film but the stunned faces of the
audience as it files silently out of the theater.

After
supper we went to a local church, the Parish of the Ascension. We were too late
for evening prayer but in time for a meal with the pastor, the church warden
and his wife and several guests. In a snug room painted pale green we enjoyed a
meal of potatoes, fish and wine, plus two bottles of Russian champagne.

We
talked a little about the possible ordination of women to the priesthood. The
warden’s wife, Larisa, who keeps the parish accounts, was very animated in her
motions, with bird-like quickness, and eager in speaking. She was wearing a
dark red dress with a bright blue kerchief over her black hair. She said she
would be willing to have women ordained if the church were in a situation of
there not being enough men. “Until then the woman is called to be a mother,
that is her first duty, and we should do that if there is no need to be
priests. As it is now, there are four or five men for every place in the
seminary so there is no necessity.”

“She
is right! She is right!” a couple of other women replied. “But within the
house, she is the priest,” another woman said firmly. “Yes, that’s true,” one
of the men responded, rather ruefully I thought. “But we should at least have
women deacons. This was done in the early church.” About this there seemed to
be agreement. I sat next to Bishop Basil, visiting from Washington, who for so
many years couldn’t get a visa. “Times really have changed,” he said.

From
Larisa I learned something about parish finances. Each parish gives ten percent
of its income to the diocese. Another ten percent goes to the Soviet Peace
Fund. In this small parish, ten percent equals 20,000 rubles — a lot of money.
Larisa counts the money, pays out what is due to the diocese and the Peace
Fund, pays the parish bills, and pays those employed by the church — the
priest, the deacon, the reader, a few of the singers in the choir (most are
volunteers, but for a few this is their vocation or at least part of it). “I
also pay the taxes,” she says, “and that’s a lot of money, almost half for a
priest, because legally he is self-employed and therefore in the highest tax
category.”

At
the end, we faced the icon corner and sang the final blessing.

Kiev,
April 23: We met with the abbess of the
Pokrovskye Convent, Igumenya (equivalent to Mother Superior) Margarita. In the
convent she is referred to simply as Matushka. She was busy with convent
matters when we arrived. Another sister brought us to a large room with several
desks. On the wall we found photos taken in the 1880s when the convent was
founded. It looks much the same today. Other pictures were of the Russian
Orthodox monastery at Mt. Athos in Greece. We noticed several photos of Kiev at
the turn of the century including a photo of the monument by the Dnieper
commemorating the baptism of Russia, in which we could see the cross that
originally was on top. The room was full of plants. Though it was a chilly day,
the room was full of light and felt almost tropical.

Matushka
Margarita came in. She was wearing an ordinary black habit and a black fur cap.
Her face is faintly lined. She sat at her desk turned toward us, very still,
steady, attentive. Under the glass covering her desk were postcards of flowers,
churches, birds. Occasionally she rested her hands on an abacus. (The abacus is
still in wide use. Wherever buying and selling go on in Russia, no sound is
more familiar than the clicking of abacus beads.) She had a rosary in her hand.

I
asked about daily life in the convent. “We get up at 4 or 4:30 and at 5 we have
our first prayers. Then at 8 there is the Holy Liturgy, a public service.
Because of the nature of certain jobs, not every sister can be at the Liturgy,
but in some cases jobs can be rotated so, as much as possible, each sister can
participate. At 11 we have breakfast and then each person has some jobs to do
— gardening, care of the sick, cooking, cleaning, making bread for the church,
receiving guests. We have many guests! Lunch is at 3 and then more work until
the Evening Service, also public, at 5. The church is open until 8 or 9. There
is a service of compline just for the community at 10, and then we sleep.”

How
about accepting new members? How do people enter? “First, those who wish to
come prepare themselves before coming. They think about which monastery and
which Rule they should follow. When they apply, they are interviewed. We ask
them why they want to come here. Generally they say, ‘I would like to serve and
pray and for me the monastery is the most suitable life for Salvation.’ After
that they have time to visit, to look, to try it, to see how we live, what we
are doing. It is one thing to know by words and speeches, another to live the
life. Then, if we see she is a suitable person, we admit her to the community.”

How
long is the novitiate? “There is no standard time. It depends on the person. If
she is well prepared, she might be allowed to take the vow quite soon. Before
this happens, we discuss the person in the Council and we make a decision
together. If we agree, then we ask the Metropolitan to give his blessing. Only
then does the sister put on the habit. For some it can be a long time before
that happens. People are different, different by age, experience and by
Spirituality. In any event we expect people to be 40 before they take the first
vow and we do not accept people into the community before they are 30. When a
sister is at least 60, if she is a good one, if she is eager to do more, then
she may be allowed to take a second vow, the schema. In that case she
has no other duty except to pray. She goes to all the services, and really she
is praying all the time, for herself, for the community, for the church, for
the world. We have twenty sisters who have taken the second vow.”

I
asked if she could tell me more about the prayer life. “We pray the psalms all
day, the sisters doing this in turns of one hour. As long as we have been
living here, there has been constant prayer. Every day we receive requests for
prayer for particular people, both living and dead, and this becomes a part of
our life of prayer. We pray the rosary. This is an essential part of the
spiritual life of nuns and monks. We wear it around our wrists when not using
it. To read a book, you need light. Perhaps it will bother someone else. But to
pray the rosary, you need no light and you disturb no one. In our tradition, we
don’t need to repeat the same prayer all the time but can say ten of one, ten
of another, ‘Lord, have mercy on me,’ or any prayer or sentence from the Bible
that is helpful.”

I
asked about Easter. “Easter is not Easter without Great Lent. As believing
people, people believing in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, we need to
prepare spiritually and so need to keep Great Lent. We need compassion and
communion. We need to take part in church services and to pray wherever we are.
We need to deepen our feeling for others. We need to discover repentance.
During Holy Week, we need to think and feel why we are here in this world, and
to consider that Jesus was crucified for us, and that we too need to take up
our cross and follow him. We believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, and
that all of us will be raised as well, so Great Lent is preparation also for our
own resurrection.

“Preparation
for Easter can’t be expressed in words — one has to feel it. It isn’t
just certain things we don’t do or don’t eat. We don’t eat anything made from
milk or eggs. We in the convent never eat meat, and during Lent we don’t eat
fish — but these things are only the surface of Lent. What we are mainly doing
is spiritual celebration. We have a song: ‘We are fasting not only by flesh but
by soul.’”

Has
religious life changed in the Russian Church over the centuries? “We know that a
lot of believers are doing much in a spiritual way, but it is also clear that
we are much weaker nowadays than those who went before us. We have to try to be
more as they were.”

What
about the educational level of sisters? “Some of us are well educated, but not
me. I speak just as an ordinary person. I grew up in an ordinary Christian
family. But all we really need to know is that life doesn’t need fine words.
You have to live it. You have to offer a good spiritual example to others —
not just words but how you are living. This isn’t only for monks but for every
Christian person. But we who are living this life, we have a special
responsibility. God asks more of us.”

Before
parting she let me take her picture. I asked her to pray especially for my
family and told her something of my own family history. She had Fr. Boris write
the names in Russian. Then and there we turned toward the icon in the corner of
the room and where she prayed for each person named “that the light of faith
would shine in their life.” She said she would continue this prayer regularly.
At the entrance to the building Fr. Boris took a picture of us together and
then she watched us drive away.

After
lunch and a visit to the Ukrainian Art Museum, Volodya and I went book
browsing. We had noticed a set of Shakespeare in a particular shop but it
turned out to the Ukrainian translation. We enjoyed the search and had a good
look at center of Kiev, between a high point overlooking the Dnieper and our
hotel.

Volodya
often refers to the stories of Somerset Maugham. “I remember almost all of
Maugham’s stories. Of course he was not a genius, but very talented.” Sometimes
he asks if a certain person we have met doesn’t remind me of a particular
character in one of Maugham’s stories. Matushka Margarita reminded him of
someone in the story, “Painted Veil.”

The
longer we are together, the more often Volodya recites poetry, sometimes in
Russian, sometimes English. Today, inspired by a painting of a peasant woman’s
face seen in the museum this morning, it was one of Shakespeare sonnets:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate…

After
a “good-bye-to-Kiev meal”, we hurried to the station to catch the night train
to Odessa but it turned out we had read the ticket wrong. We thought it was
leaving at 9:55 but it was train 55 and it left at 9:31. We arrived at
9:35, just in time to see the train disappearing. For the next hour I guarded
our suitcases and read Gorky while Volodya got the tickets validated for a
refund and Fr. Boris made a futile effort to see if there might be an
alternative way to get to Odessa that night either by train or plane. We took
the tram back into the city and in the morning caught a flight to Odessa.

Odessa,
April 24: Fr. Boris, Volodya and I are staying
in an old, rambling guest house of the Ascension Monastery on a high embankment
above the Black Sea a few miles west of Odessa. We have also acquired a
babushka, Sr. Invof, who is short, slightly cross-eyed, dressed in faded black,
wearing a stained cotton apron. Her name, Invof, means love. She has been at
the guest house thirty years but belongs to a nearby community, the Convent of
the Nativity of the Mother of God, where there are about sixty nuns. She has a
look of bewilderment on her face whenever I say anything in Russian. When I
asked her if I could take her photo, she turned toward the wall, hid her face
in her apron, and wouldn’t turn around until I promised not to point my camera
toward her.

The
Odessa Theological Seminary is fifty yards away. Next door is the summer home
of the Patriarch of Moscow. An orchard stands between the guest house and the
sea: pear trees, apple, plum, cherry. The paths run under grape arbors.

We
arrived at the monastery as people were streaming out of the main gate. The
morning service was over, bells were ringing and, at a well near the church,
one of the monks was distributing holy water. [photo of monk at the well]
Everyone was carrying at least one bottle, jug or pail of water.

On
the flight from Kiev, reading a book borrowed from Fr. Boris’ library, I became
engaged in an essay by Alexander Schmemann on “Worship in the Secular Age”
which happened to include a section on water:

To bless water, making it ‘holy water,’ may have two
entirely different meanings. It may mean, on the one hand, the transformation
of something profane, and thus religiously void or neutral, into
something sacred, in which case the main religious meaning of ‘holy
water’ is precisely that it is no longer ‘mere’ water, and is in fact opposed to
it — as the sacred is to the profane. Here the act of blessing reveals nothing
about water, and thus about matter in the world, but on the contrary makes them
irrelevant to the new function of water as ‘holy water’….

On the other hand, the same act of blessing may mean the
revelation of the true ‘nature’ and ‘destiny’ of water, and thus of the world
— it may be the epiphany and the fulfillment of their ‘sacramentality.’ By
being restored through the blessing to its proper function, the ‘holy water’ is
revealed as the true, full, adequate water, and matter becomes again a means of
communion with and knowledge of God.

Now anyone acquainted with the content and the text of the
great prayer of blessing of water, at Baptism and Epiphany, knows without doubt
that they belong to the second of these two meanings, that their term of
reference is not the dichotomy of the sacred and the profane, but the
‘sacramental’ potentiality of creation in its totality…”xxviii

The
same essay defines secularism as “a negation of worship….the negation of man
as a worshipping being, as homo adorens: the one for whom worship is the
essential act….It is the rejection of the words, ‘It is meet and right to
sing to thee, to bless thee, to praise thee, to give thanks to thee, and to
worship thee in every place of thy dominion….’”

Fr.
Schmemann recalls a Twelfth Century Latin theologian, Berengarius of Tours, who
argued that, because Christ is mystically and symbolically present in the Eucharist,
he therefore isn’t really present. The Lateran Council condemned Berengarius,
declaring that, as Christ’s presence in the eucharist is real, his presence is
not mystical. Schmemann sees such border-drawing between the real and the
mystical as the foundation of secularism. It is the loss of a sense of unity
between the visible and invisible, a quality essential to authentic
Christianity. “It was the collapse of the fundamental Christian understanding
of creation in terms of its…. sacramentality.” Ever since, he argues,
western Christianity has embraced dualism, breaking existence into the realms
of supernatural and natural, the sacred and the profane. Schmemann fears such
dualism is gaining ground in Orthodoxy.

How
the Russian Orthodox are coping with secularism, I can’t say, except it is
clear that nothing is more central to the lives of believers than prayer, and
it is apparent they have a profound sense of the sacred that intimately
concerns such ordinary things as bread, wine, salt and water.

I
asked Fr. Boris how the holy water received today will used. “People will drink
a little of it after their morning prayers, and if someone is sick they will
give them some, or put it on the part of the body that needs healing.”

Not
everyone had left the monastery grounds. People were sitting together on
benches and on the grass eating bread and Easter eggs and visiting together.
Some had their meals in the cemetery. In America we don’t picnic around grave
stones.

Our
host is Fr. Inocenti Shestipol, one of the 44 members of the monastic community
and teacher of church history at the seminary. He has a round face, red beard,
clear, pale blue eyes, and looks at me intently whenever he speaks. He gave us
a tour of the grounds, then took us into the seminary where we saw lecture
rooms, auditorium, residence rooms, library, reading rooms, infirmary, and
administrative offices. It’s an impressive establishment. Though nearly 150
years old, the seminary has been here only seventeen years, having moved from
the central part of Odessa in order to be linked with the monastery. In the
same period student enrollment has doubled. Now they have 245 students. Four to
six beds are jammed into the residence rooms. Next to each bed, or on the
adjacent window ledge, I noticed students had made personal Easter arrangements
using Easter egg, flowers, pussy willows.

We
met with the rector of the seminary, Fr. Alexander Kravchenko. His hair is like
a lion’s mane, but grey. He has been active in ecumenical dialogue, and
especially mentioned Cardinal Willebrands, head of the Vatican’s Secretariat
for Christian Unity.

“Though
our seminary is very traditional,” he said, “at the same time we aren’t
standing still. Life pushes on. It is a dynamic age, and we have the ecumenical
movement, which brings to the seminary theologians and pastors from every
section of the Christian church, and also Jews and people from other religious
traditions. This kind of encounter never happened a generation or two ago. It
isn’t always easy. There are many things we don’t agree about. Yet we learn a
great deal and sometimes there are surprising points of connection. Also we
have had conversations here with Old Believers [from the schism that happened
within the Russian Orthodox Church four hundred years ago]. We take them in our
arms! From time to time we receive people active in the peace movement,
especially the part of it that is within the churches. Recently there was a
meeting here with the Pax Christi movement. So we are not living inside a
shell.”

We
looked together at a collection of photographs of Odessa, which included some
awful pictures of what happened in the last world war. “Too often in this world
people display their weapons,” Fr. Alexander said. “It is better to show our
faith and to hold hands, to gather together, to do together whatever we can to
keep safe the gift that God gave us. I know people have said this to you
before. You hear it again and again in our country. For 781 days Odessa was
occupied, and before that we experienced the Civil War, so it is inevitable
that we are preoccupied with peace. We always try to show people the cost of
war, even the old kind of war that happened here. And now we face weapons that
would make the world fit only for cockroaches!”

As
a parting gift, he gave me a medal of the Apostle Andrew. “We believe that
Andrew was near here, perhaps even stood at this place, before he went up the
Dnieper River. We keep his feast on December 13th in a special way. We pray he
will help us continue to make new the Church.”

We
drove into the city in a shining 1956 black Zil with faded blue curtains and
plush upholstery. It was Russia’s answer to the American fishtail Cadillac.
Despite its years it is still a royal barge. [photo of the car]

Odessa
is a park-like city of wide avenues and Nineteenth Century buildings mainly
done in the classical style though with touches of art nouveau. Houses
are soft yellow, orange and dark red. Those with two or three storeys often
have wrought-iron balconies. Though it is still cool here, the city has a
southern temperament. There are trees everywhere. The harbor is crowded with
ships. Odessa is a huge port, second only to Leningrad in the Soviet Union.
Perhaps Odessa’s most striking sight is the wide stairway, the Potemkin Stairs,
that links the seaport to the tree-lined Primorsky Boulevard in the upper city.
Before returning to the monastery for the night, we stopped at the memorial for
the war dead, left flowers and prayed.

Odessa,
April 25: We spent several hours this
morning in the catacombs east of Odessa, limestone quarries that have served as
a place of hiding in times of war and revolution. During the last world war the
catacombs were the main base for the local resistance. When we turned off our
flashlights, we could begin to imagine how much resolve was needed to make
one’s home in this damp, chilly, ebony world. It is definitely not a place for
anyone with claustrophobia. At one point during the war, these winding passage
ways had a population of 4000. Kitchens, dormitories, meeting rooms, shower
room, workshops, classrooms and hospitals can still be seen. The Germans walled
up the entrances they could discover, tried repeatedly to smoke and gas the
partisans out, but the passages run warren-like for a thousand miles. There
were always undiscovered entrances. One was down the shaft of a village well.

Returning
to sunlight from the underground world, we went on to the nearby village of
Usatovo where the parish priest, Fr. Basil Prokofia, welcomed us. He is a short
man, hobbit-like, with large, compassionate eyes and an immense grey beard. His
church of 165 years old, was recently re-painted in the old Russian style, and
is dedicated to the Assumption of Mary.

As
we stood in the middle of the church, he told us what had happened in the
village on Palm Sunday, April 9, 1944. “The Soviet troops were getting close.
Because the fascists were losing, they wanted to punish the local people. At
the end of the Holy Liturgy they came to this church and shot the priest and
all the people praying here. After that they went into the houses in the
village and killed everyone who didn’t have time to hide in the catacombs. When
they left, 270 people in Usatovo were dead, many of them old people and
children. Until today we remember each person who died. We keep them in our
memory and pray for them by name. And we pray again and again for peace, never
again to know such horrors. We pray, ‘God save us, save us, keep us from war’.
We pray to see a new heaven and a new earth. We ask any Americans coming here,
when you go home, please tell your neighbors that we are peaceful people. We
want to have friendship and to fulfill the prayer of our Savior that we may all
be one.”

His
wife and daughter had prepared lunch for us in their home near the church. I
admired the nut-stuffed prunes, a special Easter dish. That evening one of Fr.
Basil’s parishioners came to the monastery with a jar of these for me to take
home to my family.

On
the way back to Odessa, Fr. Inocenti talked about what Fr. Basil had said in
the church. “It must be difficult for you hearing so often about war. Each
family has at least one person who was killed. For me it was my grandfather.
But our experience is hard for Americans to believe or understand. What has
happened to us makes us a little like survivors of a fire who say to a child,
‘Please, never play with matches.’ We have had an experience of war that most
Americans, even many Europeans, have never known. And now we have had the
experience of Chernobyl with consequences we still don’t know. America is like
a wealthy man. The wealthy don’t know what it is like to be hungry.”

After
supper Fr. Boris and I went for a walk through the orchard to a ledge
overlooking the Black Sea in back of the Patriarch’s summer residence. We sat
on a sheltered bench that looks down on the beach and out on the water. After a
time, a monk came by and sat with us. He and Fr. Boris talked in Russian, and I
half-listened, half-watched the light on the sea, painfully aware that I don’t
know, can’t know, what it is to be Russian, to live here, to remember what
Russians remember, and to struggle in this particular society. But at least I
can experience the faith of many of those I meet, and their strength and pride,
and get occasional glimpses of anger, impatience, anxiety and grief.

We
walked back to the guest house. Volodya had been out for the evening and
returned with a friend, Alexi, and we sat in the darkness by the piano while
Alexi played and sang melancholy ballads.

Odessa,
Sunday, April 26: There was a remarkable
scene at breakfast. Sr. Invof, not as meek as she looks, exploded at the two
young seminarians who wait on our table. There is a television in a corner of
the dining room and she discovered them watching it. “Turn that off! You want
to become monks, but here you are watching television while the Holy Liturgy is
going on in the Church.” They blushed, turned off the television, and bowed
their heads to her.

The
second Sunday of Easter resembles the Feast of All Souls, November 2nd, in the
Catholic Church. It is a day of remembrance and prayer for the dead. As at the
Easter vigil, families bring food — Easter bread, Easter eggs — to the church
to be blessed. At the Assumption (Uspensky) Cathedral in Odessa, the lower
church was filled throughout the day. Priests were blessing the food and
praying by name, in Slavonic chant, for those who had died. Afterward families
went out to the cemeteries. I saw them approaching one large cemetery in steady
streams from several directions.

In
the upper part of the Assumption Cathedral the Holy Liturgy was being
celebrated. Orthodoxy brings to the Liturgy everything that is best and most
beautiful — icons, silk vestments, candles, incense, and music. Every bridge
of the senses is used to open the soul. The choral music today moved me to
tears. It seemed simultaneously to rise out of the earth like a spring, and to
fall from heaven through an opening in the sky. It is as soulful as black
spirituals though the rhythms aren’t the sort for hand-clapping. It is music
that embraces the listener body and soul. I felt transported into timelessness,
with a profound sense of God’s presence not simply within the church but
everywhere. “To sing,” said one of the Church Fathers, “is to pray twice.”

After
the Liturgy, we went into the Church baptistery. In the center of the large
room was a basin on a stand for baptizing infants and, in the corner, a
baptismal pool with steps going into it for adult use. On the other side of the
room is a long table with dividing partitions with room for seven infants.
Already young parents with their new-born children were waiting their turn. The
priest who was our host said that 3000 children and 200 adults were baptized
here last year. On the baptistery wall are quotations from the Church Fathers
plus the texts of the Our Father and Creed. One of the texts read: “Baptism is
salvation and repentance and new life and white clothing and the way to heaven
and the gift of being God’s child.”

We
went looking for the Fine Arts Museum and found the Pushkin Museum instead. In
1823-24, before going to Mikhailovskoye, Pushkin lived part of his internal
exile in this building, then a hotel. In those days Odessa was a young dusty
town with no paved streets, one small newspaper, four book shops and a
population of 20,000. It was a far cry from sophisticated St. Petersburg. At
least there was a theater, and Pushkin never missed a play. He wrote many poems
and the last 140 lines of Eugene Onegin. The woman who showed us around
the museum is one of those guides who is doing exactly the right thing,
introducing others to what she loves most. She has been there many years, but
when she recites Pushkin’s poems, you feel her joy is still fresh. “Pushkin
was,” she said with pride, “the first Russian exiled for poetry.”

We
stopped to watch children playing on the streets. There had been storms in the
small hours of the night, but by the afternoon the sky had cleared. It was warm
and there was the first hint of summer.

Back
at the monastery guest house for a lunch of meat-filled pancakes, we were
joined by the Dean of the Cathedral, Fr. Simeon Kravchenko, and a younger
priest, Fr. Victor Petluchenko, who lived in Canada for several years and
speaks English with ease. He teaches comparative religion at the seminary.

I
asked Fr. Victor to say something about himself. “Well,” he replied, “first of
all, I am a good man! Now you know it and so you won’t have to take a long time
to find out.”

We
talked about the significance of the day’s outpouring of people to all the
cemeteries. “We are still mourning people who died 45 years ago in the war,”
said Fr. Simeon. “We remember them and we still cry. We also remember what it
was to be hungry and to live in ruins.”

When
I remarked how good the food was, Fr. Simeon laughed. “Not long ago we had one
man who was in a delegation from Great Britain who brought a suitcase of bread
and canned food. His wife told him that he was going to a land where no one
smiles and people are starving. Instead he found that too many of us are
over-eating and that it is not only for religious reasons that some of us need
to fast! In the end he decided to take the food back because otherwise his wife
might not believe that we have not been hungry for many years and that we even
laugh.”

The
laughter about this story cleared the way for jokes about Chernobyl. The first,
told by Fr. Boris, was from Kiev: “Well, thank heavens it’s all over now.
Everything is fixed at Chernobyl. All the radioactivity is safely under
concrete. There’s nothing to worry about. Just one thing — the men of Kiev are
not men anymore!”

Fr.
Victor, holding up an apple, told us about someone selling apples on the
street. “The man had a sign that said, ‘Special Chernobyl apples.’ I told him
that with a sign like that, he would never get any business. ‘Oh, you think so!
But it depends on what you want to do with the apple. For example, you might
want to give it to your boss.’ ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I’ll take three.’”

I
was asked about my impression of the morning’s church service and said how
moved I was by the music. “I’m relieved to hear it,” said Fr. Simeon. “The main
thing we seem to hear from western visitors is that we are just a church of old
women. It’s a way of saying we don’t matter, that we are dying out. If you look
closely, in fact you see every kind of person at the Liturgy, but I wish
visitors might have the chance to know one or two of those old women they seem
to wish weren’t so numerous in our churches. The old women, the babushkas, are
still the majority. They are the great force in our church. Though it is
seventy years since the Revolution, we have a permanent supply of grannies! And
these are the most determined people when it comes to prayer. We have quite a
long service in our churches, especially in Lent. You would think these old
ladies would be grateful if we found some ways to shorten the services, left
out some minor things here and there. But if a priest dares to do that, the
next day we will have complaints about it at the Metropolitan’s office from
these same old women. They want to pray the same way their grandmother and
grandfather prayed. They can’t imagine another way. That is our immortal
granny. Don’t look down at her. Look up at her.”

Fr.
Victor commented, “Old or young, sacraments are our life. It isn’t as sometimes
people in the West say, that we are just stubborn and don’t want to move an
inch. For us the short services in the Western churches are like city air that
you can’t really breathe in. We like a liturgy that is country air. To
celebrate the sacraments takes time but it means clean air, and we can’t get
used to less than that.”

After
lunch, Fr. Boris, Volodya and I went back into the center of Odessa. At the
Church of St. Elijah, prayer for the dead was going on. Easter Bread, Easter
eggs and candles were on the table set up for the day’s special services. The
priest singing the prayers looked exhausted and sounded hoarse. It gave me a
glimpse of the hard labor it is to be a priest: two services every day,
baptisms, weddings, funerals, confessions, a lot of things to do and often a
crowd.

We
saw an exceptionally beautiful icon of Mary and Jesus in this church — her
long hand touching his tiny face, the infant’s face pressed against her face.
Mary’s hand, so big and sheltering, was itself a “protecting veil.”

Fr.
Victor stressed that the working churches in no way depend on government help.
“What you see in our churches we did ourselves. You see that iconostasis? One
woman spent a year repainting it and applying the gilt. And the gilded wood
carving around this icon, this was done by a man in the congregation.”

We
had an hour in the Fine Arts Museum. A painting made in 1906 by Gabriel Gorelov
caught my eye. “It shows the removal of church bells in the winter of 1700,”
said Fr. Victor. “A quarter of Russia’s bells were melted down to make cannons.
The tall man in the foreground with the moustache and the determined expression
is Peter the Great. Ignoring the protest of prelates and believers, we used the
bells to make canons. Those canons were a factor in the Russian victory over
Sweden which gave us access to the Baltic Sea and led to the foundation of St.
Petersburg.”

We
found a painting by Sergei Ivanov, done in 1910, of a European walking through
a Moscow crowd in the Sixteenth Century. The Russians, in colorful robes, were
laughing at the European, a slim man in severe black and white looking every
inch a figure of purpose and profit. “Westerners were called nemtsy,”
Fr. Victor said. “It means people who are mute. As far as clothing went, it was
men like him who had the last laugh. Peter the Great ordered the men to cut
their beards and both men and women to dress like the westerners, though such
clothing is not so practical in Russian winter.”

Back
at the monastery, I talked with Fr. Victor about Catholicism. He venerates Pope
John XXIII. “We Orthodox,” he said, “couldn’t stand the First Vatican Council
[1869-70, a Council that centralized church administration and proclaimed the
dogma of papal infallibility]. When John became Pope, we knew the age of the
Inquisition was over, that the Catholic Church no longer regarded itself as the
‘one true Church’ but rather as a Church among Churches. Responding to Pope
John’s invitation, we sent Metropolitan Nikodim of Leningrad as an observer to
the Second Vatican Council and we have a better view of that event. But I have
some troubles with the present Pope, John Paul II. Perhaps because he comes
from the Polish Church, where there was such an intense struggle between
eastern and western forms of Christianity, he seems to favor a rebirth of the
Uniates [Churches that retain some features of the Byzantine Liturgy but are in
communion with Rome and whose bishops are appointed by the Pope].”

We
talked about similarities and differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism.
“Russian Orthodoxy is less institutional. We are not quite as attentive to
discipline and give more stress to mercy and forgiveness. I think it is fair to
say that we have understood Christianity less as a system of doctrines and more
as a way of life. Lay people have a bigger role in the life of the Russian
church — our church is less clerical. We have a unique category of sanctity,
the ‘passion bearer,’ the person, like Sts. Boris and Gleb, who refuses to
defend his life even though he has the right to do so. We pray on our feet and
we pray at length. The Catholic church is musical, but we are even more
musical! But the similarities are many and deep. We both have the sacraments
and apostolic succession. These are the corner-stones of both Churches.”

He
asked about my wife’s name. “Nancy would be Anastasia,” he said, “and that
means Resurrection. So you are married to Easter. And you are Iakov — the
Apostle James!” We said our goodbye. “Until we see each other again,” Fr.
Victor told me, “please, no sinning!”

Odessa,
Monday, April 27: After saying thank you
to Sr. Invof, we drove in our magnificent Zil to the airport. On the way Fr.
Inocenti expressed the hope that my book would help heal the wounds that many
Russian refugees suffer in their exile. “A lot of Russians who fled after the
revolution are still missing what existed here before. They are very bitter.
But my view is that what happened was somehow God’s will. It does no good to be
angry, to hate, to be bitter. We need to look at what is good. When we prepare
for communion, we need to put aside all hatred.”

Before
leaving Odessa, I discovered that the residents of the monastery are not only
monks. There is also at least one family of foxes. I discovered a fox hole
behind a hedge. It was big, deep, and well-established, evidence that the monks
have made room for a patch of the Peaceable Kingdom. I was reminded of a
painting by Nesterov in which a bright red fox, in a posture of submission, is
approaching a young monk.

At
the airport I said goodbye to Fr. Boris. Today he returns to Kiev. From the air
we had a final glimpse of the Black Sea. Odessa was shining in sunlight, laced
with green avenues and looking like a city on the Mediterranean.

Moscow,
April 27, continued: It was two degrees
above freezing when we arrived with the sky a mass of thick grey clouds. We
were met by a theological student and were driven directly to the Danilov
Monastery where Metropolitan Filaret of Minsk, head of the Department for
External Church Affairs, was expecting me.

The
Metropolitan is a former rector of the Seminary at Zagorsk. Born in 1935, his
father was a famous professor of music, his mother a teacher. Both were devout
believers. On the walls of his large panelled office are various icons and the
symbol of the World Council of Churches. There were intricately painted Easter
eggs on his desk. He was wearing a grey cassock.

He
spoke of the need for Orthodox parishes in new residential districts. “We are
by far the biggest Church in this country,” he said, “but not the fastest
growing. The Pentecostal churches and other sects are growing more rapidly.
Part of the problem is that it is complicated and slow founding a new Orthodox
parish. It isn’t only a problem from the state side but the slow way we do
things in our Church. But if new Orthodox churches aren’t opened, then the
spiritual energy existing in each person pours into other churches and take new
forms. From our point of view it is a sad development as our conviction is that
only the Orthodox Church can correctly form religious outlook and practice. The
meaning of the Russian word for Orthodoxy — Pravoslavie — is ‘the
right way to give glory.’”

We
talked about the crisis in relations now going on between the Greek Orthodox
Church and the government in Greece, where the state will no longer tolerate
the Church having so much land and control of property. “We see once again,”
said the Metropolitan, “as we have said to the bishops in Greece, that what we
fail to do ourselves others will make us do. This is a lesson we have had to
learn with much pain.”

He
referred to a group of Americans he had met a few days before: “It still
surprises many visitors to see how vital the churches are here. Many people
still do not expect to find a living church in the Soviet Union. They think
opposition can destroy a church. In the United States I often have the sense
that believers are without a positive understanding of suffering. But attacks
are not so terrible for the Christian! Christians suffered before. We are
ordered to suffer. But the Savior is with us, he is with the whole world, and
he will give his peace to the whole world.”

A
problem for American visitors trying to understand the Russian Orthodox Church,
I said, is that in the United States we explain everything, while Russian
Orthodoxy expresses itself through imagery, music and liturgy. “It’s true,” he
said. “We tend to try to conceal our spiritual life. When you try to put what
is deepest in life into words, you find there are no words. What you want to
say is clear, but there are no words. This is the reason our church is not
famous for books of theology.”

Asked
about my family, I remarked on the impact of Russian Orthodoxy in our home
life. “Your wife is part of what you are doing, just as the wife of a priest
shares in the priesthood. Your wife is a matushka and she should come
with you to Russia. You haven’t yet seen my part of Russia, White Russia, the
real Russia. I am inviting you and Nancy. It isn’t just a polite word. I ask
you and Nancy to come this summer. You will be my guests.” He gave me a final
blessing and an Easter egg to bring home to Nancy.

Volodya’s
sister, Ludmilla, had made an Easter supper for us at their small apartment
(actually the apartment of their parents presently serving a parish in Tokyo)
on the north edge of Moscow. Besides Easter eggs and Easter bread, Ludmilla had
prepared pascha, a pyramid-shaped Easter treat made of cottage cheese,
butter, egg yolks, sugar and cognac. We ate sliced salmon and beef roasted with
garlic and drank strawberry wine and champagne. On the wall and mantel were
many icons. Volodya played a recording of Easter music sung at the Holy Trinity
Lavra. I spent a long time browsing through their bookshelves, which include
Ludmilla’s collection of English dictionaries.

A
friend, Anatoli, dropped by. I asked him what is it that draws young people
into churches. He responded, “I explain it my way. Our world has an amazing
system of life, but it’s seldom that people think about it — the meaning of
time, the meaning of day and night, the way the world is, the stars, the
flowers, the people. Somebody wanted us to become a fact, with eyes, ears,
legs. Somebody must have created all this. It didn’t just happen by accident.
This kind of thinking leads you toward God and thinking about God leads you toward
the Church. Life has a meaning, a purpose. We are in this world to find where
we belong in the next world. Life isn’t just to eat and drink and go to the
toilet.”

We
talked about films. “I have a friend who has been to many international film
festivals,” Anatoli said. “He finds that Russian films in general are better —
more sincere, more noble and idealistic. I have this impression when I go to
see western films in theaters here. I don’t understand why these qualities are
missing in so many films that come from the west. I know there are exceptions
like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. But you don’t seem to have
anything like Repentance, a film that has a significance that cuts
across all political and national lines and that has a deep religious meaning.”

He
asked, “Why do people in the United States like films with so much violence?”
Volodya’s response was more interesting than mine. “People in the United
States,” he said, “get their emotions from films. But for me real emotion is
hearing the Hymn of the Cherubim during the Holy Liturgy. This is the peak of
my emotions.”

Before
leaving, Ludmilla gave me the recipe for pascha and invited me to return
next time with Nancy.

July 1987

Before leaving Moscow in April, Metropolitan Filaret had
invited Nancy and me to come in the summer to see “White Russia, the real
Russia.” Having found friends ready to take care of our children, we went to
Moscow, a two-day ride from Holland.

July
18: A Soviet border guard woke us at 2:30
a.m.. We presented our passports and visas and made a customs declaration. The
train entered a huge building in the railyard of Brest, just inside Russia’s
border with Poland. Every car was un-coupled and, passengers still inside,
jacked up about three yards over a work pit. The old sets of wheels were then
removed and wider gauge sets installed, a fascinating ceremony that took about
an hour. We pulled into the Brest station, already bustling with people, as
dawn was breaking.

All
through the trip, the train picked up new cars, dropped off others, become
re-linked in all sorts of ways. We began in Amersfoort as the only Soviet car
on a train in which most of the cars were going to Copenhagen and Stockholm. [use
photo of the side of the car with the hammer and sickle emblem?] By the
time we crossed the Russian border we were part of a long assembly of Soviet
cars all heading for Moscow.

We
ate lunch in a Russian dining car added to the train at Brest: potatoes and
beef stroganoff, more elegantly named than made. We seemed to be the only
foreigners in the dining car. The women were hefty, with gold teeth, gingham
shifts, quick, hearty laughs; the men were solid, plainly dressed, rolling
cigarettes, enjoying themselves.

From
the window we watched the summer scenery: attractive villages of wood houses,
fields, gardens, children, people walking together, farms, animals. It was very
serene. There was an old fat man with a cap, dress shirt, dress trousers and
suspenders, sitting alone under a tree, a small meal beside him set out on a
napkin. Factory-fresh orange and yellow automobiles were lined up at a
train-crossing. Women were threshing wheat, kerchiefs on their heads, their
children playing nearby in brightly colored sweaters. There were women
sunbathing along the tracks. Between villages there were pine woods, birch
trees, heather, wild flowers. Getting close to Moscow, we passed through
Borodino, where the great battle with Napoleon was fought that Tolstoy
describes so vividly in War and Peace.

We
arrived in Moscow at 6:30 p.m., four hours behind schedule, and were met by
Vasili Maknev. [photo of Vasili] He is huge, blond and was wearing red,
white and blue suspenders. He tucked several suitcases easily under his arms,
found a taxi, and took us to the Ukraina Hotel.

Moscow,
Sunday, July 19: We went to the Holy
Liturgy this morning at a Moscow church near the Kosmos Hotel. We walked up the
church steps past a group of elderly beggars and we dropped coins in their
outstretched hands as they gave us their blessings. Nancy asked Vasili why
there were beggars on the steps of the church when everyone is able to get food
and housing in the USSR. “Some prefer to live this way,” he said. “In fact it
is an honor to be a church beggar. Each beggar must be accepted by the church
and the congregation first.” (Living in western Europe gives some perspective
on this that one wouldn’t have in America. In Holland, where everyone is
entitled to housing and food, there are still some who prefer to live by their
wits and close to the pavement rather than become objects of official care.)

Nancy
wore a scarf and looked at home in a Russian church. We stood in the midst of
old babushkas standing solidly on the floor, crossing themselves, bowing, and
occasionally going down on their knees, touching their heads to the floor. In
front of us a young mother stood with her little daughter of five or six. The
child was quiet and still, and occasionally knelt down to relax. An old nun in
black tried to make the girl more comfortable by offering her a small chair,
but the girl preferred her mother’s skirts. The nun stood in the front and
received candles from people in the congregation who passed them up through the
crowd. She lit them and set them in the candle stand.

Binding
everything together in the Liturgy is a powerful sense of attentiveness. “Be
attentive!” is a key phrase. (Vasili told us afterward that he sometimes leaves
the Liturgy to walk outside, because he has foot problems and cannot always
maintain his attention.)

A
young priest with a rich deep voice and stylish haircut sang much of the
service. When it came time for a sermon, an older priest came out to speak.
These were the only spoken words in the whole service. All the people drew up
close to hear his sermon about Jesus’ healing and forgiving.

“Our
Lord,” he said, “before he healed the body, forgave the sins. Repentance is at
the root of healing. As sins are forgiven, as we become well spiritually, our
body is also affected. Everything is connected. Sometimes our awareness of
being sinners makes us ill. So Our Lord says to us, first of all, ‘Go and sin
no more.’ This is the lesson of today’s Gospel. Listen to these words and try
to grasp their profound meaning. We are called to accept the love of God. If we
do that, we will be both happier and healthier. May Our Lord heal us from sins
and disobedience and lead us to his kingdom.”

Nancy
wrote in her journal: “I have never been in a congregation of such unqualified
religious concentration. I had a sudden sense of being at the center of the
universe and knew that each of us had this in common. The fact of standing
rather than sitting may have something to do with remaining attentive to the
activity in the church rather than slipping into private daydreams or plans for
the rest of the day. You can’t help but pay attention to the sensuous drama
going on, the brilliant iconostasis, the constant singing, the incense. All
these things pulled me again and again to the business at hand, the eternal
present, with its music. I had such a deep sense of spiritual connection.”

After
the Liturgy we walked in the cemetery behind the church. In a tree-shaded,
weedy place against a wall we found signs of someone’s encampment, a sleeping
mat and old clothing neatly arranged on the ground. “It could be the
grave-diggers,” said Vasili, “or a mad person, or even a Fool For Christ’s
Sake, someone who lives on alms with no permanent home, who gives advice and
counsel to people. In Russia a Fool For Christ’s Sake is revered in a special
way.”

He
recalled such a woman back in Leningrad in the twenties, Xenia, who camped out
near a chapel. Many people came to her for advice. When she died, people still
came to the place where she had camped to reverence her. The people in the
church finally roped off the area and preserved it. She is regarded as a saint
though she has not been formally canonized.

“Russia
has always had a tradition of pilgrims and holy fools and wise sages,” said
Vasili, “and this tradition continues even today. I have the name of one of the
most famous of them, Vasili or Basil. He lived in Moscow in the time of Ivan
the Terrible, wore almost nothing, walked barefoot on snow and ice in the
winter, and had the courage to accuse the czar. He was like John the Baptist.
Amazingly the czar left Basil alone. Perhaps he even feared him. When Basil
died, he was buried next to the cathedral, officially named the Cathedral of
the Intercession of the Mother of God. Because the Muscovites regarded him as a
saint, a chapel was built over Basil’s grave and became part of the church. So
the church built at the order of Ivan the Terrible has taken the name of one of
the few people in Russia who wasn’t afraid of the czar.”

After
lunch we went for a long walk, first to a museum devoted to Pushkin, then
through a residential district near Arbat Street where Vasili grew up, then on
to Red Square.

On
Red Square I marveled once again at St. Basil’s Cathedral, so playful, so un-serious,
like a huge page from a children’s book. “But the paint they used on the last
paint job was too cheap,” Vasili complained. “It was painted only a few years
ago — now it needs to be painted again.”

Our
walk took us past half a dozen book shops along the way, all closed because it
is Sunday. “Russians are readers but we don’t have enough paper,” said Vasili.
“The result of the shortage is that, among authors, the living fight the dead.
Second-rate books by living authors are printed in huge editions while the
works of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin are always in short supply.”

Nancy
found it strange to be in a city without advertising. “In the States, everybody
wants to sell,” said Vasili. “Here, everybody wants to buy.” Vasili lives in a
two-room apartment that costs 20 rubles a month. “That means it is almost
free,” he said. “You can use your money for other things, but perhaps not what
you really want. There are all sorts of shortages, and no one ever knows why.
There are plenty of supplies, plenty of labor, yet even in Moscow we have a
shortage of workers. Or at least we have a shortage of workers who work with
real care. Perhaps you heard the story about a foreigner visiting a factory.
‘How many people work here?’ the guest asked the factory director. ‘Oh, about
half,’ the director answered.”

Moscow,
July 20, Monday: I asked Vasili how it
happened that, in the early sixties when so many churches were closed, one
church remained open for worship, another shut its doors. “Each church has its
own story. There is one church that I know which was ordered closed yet stayed
open just because the wife of the chairman of the local Council of Religious
Affairs made holy hell for her husband until he agreed to let the church stay
open. A famous scientist, a rocket designer, lived near the church you went to
yesterday. There are statues of him and his face is on postage stamps. He was a
believer and worshipped at that church. He stood out of sight from the
congregation, behind the iconostasis. Perhaps his being there was all that was
needed to protect that church.”

Nancy
asked about religious discussion groups in Moscow. “Moscow is full of sects,
bursting with them,” said Vasili. “We have people talking about astrology,
several schools of Buddhism, different kinds of meditation, every sort of
Christianity, a lot of Bible study groups. People are starving for anything
that might give meaning to life and sometimes they make strange choices to fill
the hole. But in the Russian Orthodox Church we discourage discussion groups.
There is the old Russian saying, ‘Opinion is the mother of all suffering.
Opinion is the second Fall.’ You can form study groups only with the blessing
of the Church and with some appropriate person to give guidance so that people
don’t wander off on their own track. Otherwise people get lost in their
opinions, everyone reading the Bible in his own way, always finding exactly what
he wants to find and missing everything else. You end up with Christianity in a
thousand little sections and everyone hating each other. The theologians are
permitted to have their own theological opinions, but not the rest of us. It
isn’t our tradition. We pray together and believe together. For Orthodox
believers the main place to hear the Bible is in church. The Bible was written
for reading in church as part of worship, not for discussion clubs.”

The
Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, Zagorsk, July 21: Each time I come to Zagorsk I am caught by surprise.
Zagorsk, for all its ancient buildings, is always a place of the present
moment.

The
most memorable part of this visit was the time we had with a young monk named
Father Alexi. He spoke to us chiefly about the vital importance of mystical
union with God through Christ: that it is possible, that it is worth one’s
total efforts, one’s life, that indeed life is empty and pointless without it,
and that it only happens within the community of faith, the Church.

“This
Lavra is the center of the Russian Orthodox Church, and St. Sergius is the
heart of the Lavra,” Fr. Alexi said in welcoming us. “His heart encompasses the
whole world.”

As
we stood before a model of the Roman catacombs where Christians worshipped during
times of persecution, Fr. Alexi asked, “What caused this obedience to Christ?
What caused believers to risk their lives but never to threaten anyone and
never to defend themselves? The Christians could have taken up arms but instead
they gave up their lives. They had the strength of obedience to Christ.
Obedience is of the utmost importance, even obedience to death. They gave
witness — the Greek word for witness is martyr — with their own blood.”

As
we stood before the oldest icon in the seminary collection, dating from the
Ninth Century, he said: “Icons also are witnesses to Christ. It has been said
that the fact that there is a Holy Trinity icon painted by Rublev is proof of
the existence of God. Without communion with God, such an icon cannot be made.
Without God we are not capable of such beauty. A lesser beauty has its roots in
a greater beauty.

“Culture
is based on cult. Culture forms us. In the Russian icon, the Russian recognizes
his own culture, his self, because it is the Russian vision of God, something
absolute. It comes from union with God. Western art is a big step down from
this. It mirrors the culture only as an image of people removed from union with
God. The state of the soul is reflected in what one paints and what one wants
to look at.

“God
teaches us how to get in contact with each other and how to treat the world. A
useful way to understand our relationship to God and to each other is to
picture God as the center of a wheel with ourselves at various points on the
radii. As we approach God, the center, we approach each other, and as we move
away from the center, we move away from each other. You cannot approach God
without approaching others also. God asks us to love our enemies. That’s
difficult! But it is the way of perfection. We are called to achieve it.
Someone isn’t a saint because of his high morality but because of his communion
with God. It is out of that communion with God that a saint loves his enemy. He
cannot do otherwise. Love of enemies can occur only with love of God. The two
happen simultaneously.

“Christ
didn’t say thinking is the way. He said love is the way. But sometimes
it looks like madness. You have heard about the Holy Fools, the Fools for
Christ. Some of the saints intentionally put on the mask of madness. Under
their rags they often wear a heavy metal cross. Without a purified heart this
wouldn’t be possible. It is done to achieve the gift of humility without which
it is impossible to love anyone.

“It
is said that one of the Fools for Christ was taken into heaven where he saw
many saints but not the Mother of God. He asked the angel guiding him where she
was. ‘She is on the sinful earth helping humanity.’ He realized that the saints
can enjoy all the gifts of paradise but they continue to be with us in our suffering.

“There
are 700 basic models of icons, and far more models of sanctity. But in each
case the perfected Christian has not achieved perfection through his own good
works, but by faith, which can come only through the sacraments, only through
the Church. We cannot be saved alone. We must be part of a community.”

Fr.
Alexi pointed to a Fifteenth Century icon of St. George battling the dragon.
“The dragon represents evil,” he said. “But the icon makes clear that it isn’t
George who slays the dragon. If you look closely, you see he isn’t really
holding the spear, just touching it lightly. It rests in his hand. Also notice
the calm dispassion in George’s face. The iconographer makes clear that this is
a battle without enmity. Also notice how thin the lance is — thin as a pencil,
not at all suited for combat — and see the cross at the top. St. George is
fighting not with a military weapon but with the holy and life-giving cross.
The icon show us that it is only the strength of God that overcomes evil, not
our own strength.”

St.
Paul, in a nearby icon, is shown holding the Bible with a powerful grip. “You
see him full of life, ready to sacrifice himself. You feel his anguished love
of his brothers and sisters so profound that he was prepared to be separated
from Christ if that would draw others closer. The Bible is shown in reverse
perspective. The Bible is smaller for the person standing in front of the icon
than it is for St. Paul. You realize that you are only at the beginning of the
road of faith. It is only in deeds for God’s sake that we start on the way to
God.”

We
stood before the relics of St. Sergius: two chalices made of wood, several
small icons, one of his sandals, a tool he used in making wooden toys. (Zagorsk
is still renowned for its wooden toys.)

Fr.
Alexi said that there are still experiences at the Lavra of people encountering
St. Sergius. “In one case a pilgrim came from a remote part of the country and
had made no arrangements to stay anywhere for the night. It began to rain. An
old man came up to him and asked, ‘Why are you standing in the rain? Please
join me.’ They walked for fifteen minutes to a little cabin. The old man gave
his guest bread and water and a bench to lay on. When the man woke in the
morning, the cabin was gone. The pilgrim discovered he was under a fir tree. He
told the monks what had happened. They knew that once again St. Sergius himself
had cared for another pilgrim.”

We
eagerly listened to everything Fr. Alexi said, like hungry people being fed. We
could sense his excitement and the mounting enthusiasm he felt as he shared
more and more with us. Finally, when we parted, he thanked us for our
attentiveness, and said, “I think one day you will become naturalized Russian
citizens.”

Fr.
Alexi spoke so intently and with such clear devotion and intelligence that even
Vasili was impressed, “old hard-boiled egg though I am.”

Moscow,
July 22: Waiting for the Kremlin gates to
open this morning, we discovered a group of Americans among the crowd of
Russians. An elderly American woman asked a young Russian couple if she could
photograph their little girl, about eight years old, who had big white organdy
bows in her hair (“a fifty-year-old hairstyle,” said Vasili). “I have a
granddaughter of my own,” the American told the Russian couple in a heavy
southern accent. The Russians didn’t speak English but understood her desire,
and proudly adjusted the little girl’s hair bows. The crowd cleared a space,
the girl stood very still, looking serious and nervous. Her parents looked
proud. The American woman took the photo and thanked them all profusely. The
gates opened and we went on for an unhurried visit to some of the oldest parts
of the Kremlin.

In
the afternoon, we went to the Danilov Monastery, still being prepared for the
millennium. The air was filled with noise and dust. We saw a group of workers
gathered around a cross and singing a litany for the dead over the grave where
bones discovered during the restoration work were being re-buried.

We
were received by Metropolitan Filaret who told us about a group from the
American National Council of Churches who were currently in the USSR to prepare
to serve as guides for groups of American Christians who will take part in the
millennium. “The guides, all of them Americans, met with Patriarch Pimen in
Zagorsk yesterday,” he said, “and sang for him a Psalm in Church Slavonic! I
never expected to hear American Christians singing in our language. And they
were good.”

He
mentioned that Protestant visitors are sometimes disturbed by all the imagery
and icons in the spirituality of Orthodoxy. “But actually every one has some
icons, though perhaps it is a photograph of someone they admire or whose music
they especially like. The photo of the earth from space is a contemporary icon,
an icon for both believers and unbelievers.”

We
spent the evening with Volodya and Ludmilla at their apartment, one of several
identical, huge blocks. We took a rather shaky lift up to their floor, the
fourteenth, where Volodya met us. Ludmilla has been reading The Habit of
Being, a collection of the letters of the American writer, Flannery
O’Conner.

Moscow,
23 July: Visiting the Novodevichy Cemetery
today, we stopped at the grave of Gogol, whose stories I had been reading on
the train from Holland. [photo of grave] “He was, if I may say, a
nuisance to himself,” said Vasili. “He was thin, shy, very nervous, yet was
deeply loved by everyone who came in close contact with him. He wrote some of
the best, funniest stories in the Russian language. Some people say he saw
visions. At the end of his life he wrote a letter calling on his friends to
turn to the Holy Orthodox Faith. This brought him a lot of criticism. People
said he was crazy. For a Russian it is funny to think of him being translated
into another language. We can’t imagine it.”

After
lunch we went to the State Council for Religious Affairs where we met with Yuri
Smirnov and Sergei Kuznetsov. The Council is widely regarded as being the
state’s instrument for keeping believers on a leash. There is a tradition of
such structures in Russia since the time of Peter the Great. I went expecting a
formal and perhaps grim encounter. In fact it was a lively meeting that opened
with a discussion of the recent visit of Cardinal Sin from the Philippines.
“The Cardinal was amazed and deeply moved at the vitality of the churches in
Russia,” Yuri Smirnov told us. We had already heard similar accounts from
others. “But Cardinal Sin’s willingness to come to the Soviet Union remains
exceptional. Some Catholic bishops were invited to the Peace Forum, but none
came. Catholics seem to be the least willing to accept invitations to visit our
country. We especially hope that more Americans Catholic leaders can come here.
If the Orthodox Church invites them, the door is open and our Council will do
whatever we can to help them see what they whomever they want to see and go
wherever they want.”

We
also talked about religious rights in the USSR. “In the past there were many
instances where the rights of believers were not respected. But this is
changing. In this Council, we see our function as assuring that the rights of
believers are respected, not denied, and we try to be a bridge between
religious bodies and state institutions when believers have needs, for example
when they need use of state-owned building equipment for restoration of
churches or construction of new ones. New legislation is now being drafted
which we expect will much improve the situation of believers in this country.
This involves consultation with all religious groups. We hope the legislation
will be ready by next summer, in time for the millennium.”

Moscow,
25 July: Today, with Vasili away, we went
on our own to see the inside of St. Basil’s on Red Square. We arrived early
while the queue was short, paid our few kopeks and then wandered through the
narrow passageways decorated with vine-like geometric designs. Under each dome
is a small chapel. In the lower church we discovered a large icon of a Fool for
Christ’s Sake, emaciated and wearing a loincloth while listening attentively to
divine messages from above. It was St. Basil himself. [photo of the icon]

Ludmilla
had invited us for lunch. We took the Metro and bus to get there. It was a
beautiful afternoon. We bought a big sack of tomatoes for a house gift from a
street vendor at the bus stop, and walked across a muddy, weedy lot until we
found the right building. Ludmilla was in her apartment with a friend who
seemed to understand English but did not speak it. We ate bread, tomatoes and
cucumbers, sausage, and drank kvas. We talked all afternoon, and
exchanged stories about living in New York, about her parents, her religious
experiences, and about icons.

Ludmilla
told us an icon story: “I had been so ill that everyone was worried that I
would die. I fell asleep in my illness, and had a dream in which I was walking
on railroad tracks that extended infinitely into the dark. Down the tracks, a
woman came walking toward me, dressed in black, with white hands and bare white
feet. The woman said to me, ‘Don’t worry, the train isn’t going to hit you.’
When I woke up, I was well. I wanted to get right out of bed, but my mother
insisted that I not get up so soon. I told my mother about the dream, and she
said, ‘That was the Mother of God.’ The next Sunday, I went to church. One nun
who had been praying for my recovery said she had a gift for me — an icon of
the Mother of God. When she gave it to me I immediately recognized the face. It
was the same face that had been in my dream.” Ludmilla showed us the icon. It
hangs over her bed. [photo of the icon]

On
a crowded bus going home, an old man getting off whispered something in my ear.
I was at a loss as to what the man had said and then it hit me. It was an
international whisper between men: “Your fly is open.”

We
ate supper and went to the station to catch the train to Smolensk. Over tea in
our compartment, we talked about Solzhenitsyn’s novel, The First Circle,
set it prison in Stalin’s time. “It is a courageous subject but it’s not a book
I admire,” said Vasili. “The prisoners don’t sound like prisoners, they sound
like graduate students. The book’s main problem is that it doesn’t reveal that
prison is boring, a piece of life stretched into eternity.”

Smolensk,
Sunday, July 26:

Smolensk,
“the key and gate of Russia,” is the most western of ancient Russian cities. On
the north end of the River Dnieper, it is at the source of the water highway
that leads past Kiev to the Black Sea.

Father
Victor, a quiet young priest, met us when the train pulled into the station at
dawn. After checking into the hotel and having a brief rest, we went to Holy
Liturgy at the Cathedral of the Assumption, the principal Smolensk landmark, a
five-domed green and white building standing at the top of a steep hill in the
center of the city. Inside the cathedral is a mammoth, heavily gilded
iconostasis from the Eighteenth Century that includes not only icons but
statues. There is also a baroque pulpit, not an element of Russian church
architecture until the time of Peter the Great.

Archbishop
Kyrill was presiding, a man in his forties, among the youngest bishops of the
Russian Orthodox Church. He has a greying black beard and a clear, direct
manner. For ten years before coming to Smolensk he was rector of the Leningrad
Theological Academy where he is credited with many of the innovations that
happened there, including the introduction of women students.

While
he stood in the center of the church with his arms outstretched, attendants
vested him. It as though he were no longer himself, but a moving, praying,
singing part of the liturgy, all connected with the church, the icons, the
music, the incense, the Eucharist.

The
church was crowded. There were the usual deeply pious old women, among them one
woman on her knees at the front rail, eyes fixed on an icon, crossing herself
and bowing over and over again. Russian tourists moved in and out, watching
rather than participating. Despite the almost continuous motion among the
people and the clergy, and the constant music from the choirs, there was a
powerful sense of attentiveness and stillness.

No
one hushed the children in the church. They obviously enjoyed being there. We
noticed a priest and his family in a vacant choir stall. One daughter looked to
be twelve and her little sister about four. The older sister was holding the
little one up on the rail and they were hugging and stroking each other. All
the while, the older girl joined in singing the words to all the prayers and
hymns.

The
day’s Gospel was the story of Jesus healing two blind men. A sermon followed by
Archbishop Kyrill. As he began to speak, the congregation gathered around him,
standing with their hands relaxed at their sides, completely attentive.

“Our
Savior said to the blind men, ‘Do you believe I can heal you?’ They said, ‘Yes,
Lord.’xxix And then he healed their blindness.

“This
story makes me wonder about wonders. A wonder is something that surprises. It
goes past the border of usual experience. We see wonders and we call them
miracles. But there are people who reject the possibility of miracles or
anything that goes beyond their own experiences. They say, ‘It cannot be.’

“What
the Church teaches is that wonders are special expressions of the love and
power of God. When we experience or contemplate wonders, they inspire wonder in
us.

“St.
Augustine says that the normal growing of wheat is akin to the multiplication
of loaves. So much of the beauty of the natural world awakens wonder: sky, sun,
plants, water. ‘Look at these things,’ says St. Augustine, ‘and see that they
are beautiful. Their beauty is their confession of God.’

“Most
wonders stand on laws that are the foundation of the world, in which everything
is developed. And isn’t this too a wonder? When God does things beyond our
understanding, even then he is acting within the laws of the universe.

“Not
to see beauty, not to be aware of wonders — this is to be blind and deaf. The
French scientist Pasteur said that the more we contemplate the world, the more
we are filled with wonder.

“Some
people can see wonders, some not. Why? What makes it possible to become aware
of the actions of God in the world? Do we need special education? Some special
wisdom? No, dear brothers and sisters, the Gospel shows us otherwise. Christ
said to the two blind men, ‘Do you believe I can heal you?’ Only when they
confess that they do believe does he heal them.

“They
were healed, but there were even at that time people who were not moved to
wonder by what he did. There were those who said, ‘Jesus casts out devils only
because he is the prince of devils.’xxx What he does, they said, isn’t a miracle. It is magic. And
so they dismissed what Jesus did.

“Faith
is the condition of wonder, not the other way around. Perhaps here at this
moment there could be a miracle. Even then there would be people present who
would leave saying, ‘Yes, there was something strange, something we need to
clarify.’ In fact we find in the press stories about events for which there
seems to be no natural explanation. But this doesn’t mean people reading these
stories are led to faith. Miracles don’t give birth to faith. Perhaps that is
why Our Lord in this Gospel forbids people to publicize what he did for the
blind men. The news would add nothing to people’s faith. It was not with
wonders but with his words that he tried to soften people’s hearts. A heart
filled with love and faith can distinguish good and evil. The believer can
cross any boundary with God.

“Love
is the power of God. May God help all believers to be attentive to the wonders
that, because of God’s love, fill the whole universe.”

The
congregation replied, “God save you!”

While
the Liturgy was going on, Vasili left us for about a half hour. When he
returned he said that another priest had been giving a talk in the back of the
church on such topics as the reception of communion, marriage and mutual help.

At
communion, the children came first — all the children, beginning with babies,
held in the arms of their parents or other adult friends. The first in line was
the twelve-year-old girl, holding up her little sister to receive the
Eucharist. Communion is administered with a spoon while an attendant holds a
napkin under the chin of the person receiving.

After
the Liturgy, we were given an historical tour of the church by Fr. Victor. As
we moved through the church, a crowd gathered around us just to hear what Fr.
Victor was saying, straining to catch every word.

After
lunch, we saw some of the city. Though Smolensk is more than eleven centuries
old, very little of the ancient city has survived. Close to Russia’s frontier
and on the main route to Moscow, it has often suffered the cruelties of war. We
saw the city’s kremlin wall, once so important to the defense of Russia that
the czar, Boris Gudounov, prohibited all stone construction elsewhere in the
country until Smolensk’s defenses were complete. The walls have been restored
and strengthened many times. In 1812, during the French retreat, Napoleon’s
troops blew up six of the kremlin towers. By the end of World War II, only
eight percent of the buildings survived and ten percent of the population.

We
came upon an old veteran whose uniformed chest was covered with numerous war
medals. He was marching down the middle of a broad, carless boulevard as if he
were part of a parade, except there was no one else. “We say that he is wearing
his iconostasis,” Vasili remarked.

One
often sees men and women wearing their war medals, though rarely with such pomp
and circumstance. Every day in Russia, there are reminders of the last world
war. For many Americans, absorption in that catastrophe appears almost
neurotic, a pathetic entrapment in the past. Living in Holland, I find the
attitude much less surprising. The last world war is still an open wound for
many of the Dutch. One Dutch theologian we know, a man in his forties, said to
me, “There has not been a day in my life when I haven’t thought about that
war.” But the destruction was much less in Holland than here.

We
went to a city war memorial erected on the site of Nazi mass executions. The
memorial consists of a grave mound — a barrow — that was constructed by local
citizens who each contributed a handful of earth. There is also a statue of a
sorrowing mother evocative of Russian iconography. Near the memorial is a big
children’s playground, filled with laughter, a merciful reminder of the power
of life over death.

We
went to a little art museum that had some magnificent icons and an ancient
statue of King David that was simply wonderful. The museum guide was excited,
knowledgeable, interested. We learned a great deal about the woman who founded
the collection, Maria Tenisheva. “She was a female Tretyakov,” said Vasili,
referring to the founder of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow.

We
had a brief visit to a Museum of Linen, one of this region’s main industries.
It seems that White Russia takes its name from the white linen garments
peasants wore in ancient times. As the museum is a former monastery, we asked
Fr. Victor whether Smolensk wanted to have a monastery again. “Not yet,” he
said, “You cannot have a monastery with only four or five monks. Also we don’t
yet have a strong enough infrastructure of active believers. People in this
region are not regular about attending church. Sometimes we only have 400 in
the cathedral for a service. So we aren’t yet ready for a monastery.
Monasteries are part of a deeply-rooted community of faith. But we do have
monks serving in local churches and we have a number of pious women dedicated
to prayer and service.”

Walking
this evening in a park near our hotel, we came upon a handsome statue of
Pushkin. His face has strong, negroid features. Pushkin’s grandfather, Peter
Abramovich Hannibal, was an African who rose to national power and became a
noble under Peter the Great. Whatever criticism one makes of Peter the Great, he
wasn’t a racist. The statue, Vasili told us, is the work of a woman sculptor, a
remarkable post script to his remark the other day about there being no great
women among Russia’s artists, writers, and poets.

Vasili
is such an astonishing fellow. He is vastly proud to be Russian. He is a devout
believer. He is a great reader and lover of poetry. He has travelled widely. He
relishes his work and is excellent at it, speaking English effortlessly and
with feeling. He was Billy Graham’s translator a few years ago, and told us how
Graham insisted that Vasili not only translate the words but mimic Graham’s
gestures with the Bible. Vasili, a born dramatist, happily obliged. Vasili was
Margaret Thatcher’s translator this year during the Church part of her visit to
the USSR. He became so engrossed in conversation with her at Zagorsk that she
had to remind him to eat.

Vasili
also loves things American — American kitsch, he says. In addition to his
red-white-and-blue suspenders, he wears a Jefferson nickel tie clip reading “In
God We Trust.” When he can dress casually, he chooses a khaki short-sleeved Boy
Scouts of America shirt. He knows more jokes than anyone I know, and the better
we get to know each other, the funnier and more outrageous the jokes become.
And he is a wholehearted male chauvinist. It says a lot that Nancy and he get
on so well nonetheless. In fact it is a blessing to be with him. When we aren’t
serious we are laughing.

Smolensk,
July 27:

After
a morning of being rained on in the countryside, we visited Archbishop Kyrill.
He lives in a small house with a view of the Assumption Cathedral. The dining
room table was laid with candies, cookies, and a delicious cake. Coffee, tea
and vodka were served.

I
asked why so few adults had received communion at the Liturgy yesterday. “Yes,
it is still very few, but more than used to come. Now it can be fifty on a
Sunday when it used to be not more than five. Things change, but slowly. Before
the Revolution, it was common for people to receive communion only twice a year.
People were overwhelmed by their sense of unworthiness. Patriarch Pimen has
made a call to believers to receive communion as often as possible and this
appeal is being heard. But with this there has to be a process of religious
education. We try to offer that in the church and actually prefer doing it
there. We would rather not have something like that happen in a school
classroom. Part of the process of religious education in our diocese is to have
a priest on duty throughout the day in the cathedral where they can answer
questions. We find that if one person asks a question, immediately others
gather and you have a group discussion.”

Archbishop
Kyrill is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Council of Churches.
“I got into the ecumenical movement as a ‘youth.’ It was the sixties, a decade
when everyone was bowing their heads to the young people. The experiences that
opened to me through the World Council of Churches have made me realize that
the ecumenical movement and work for the renewal of humanity and peace are
profoundly linked to each other. What enthusiasm there was for Christian unity
sixty years ago! Not that I was there, but what a spirit of youth, power, and
passion there is in papers presented at early ecumenical conferences. They are
filled with both joy and pain, with longing for unity and sorrow for division.”

Nancy
commented on how much more vital churches are in the Soviet Union than in
Holland. “The problem in the west is not organized atheism but secularism and
the consumer psychology. But we may face the same thing in a few years, so we
watch anxiously what the church does in the west as this may help us. But
perhaps we also have something to offer the church in the west, some
encouragement, some lessons. It is important to know something of the church
that exists in the first socialist state.”

I
asked about the tendency for more young people to become active believers.
“Certainly there is an encouraging influx of young people right now but we have
to be careful not to limit our perception of who is a believer by only noticing
who is standing in the church. The process of coming to belief is very complex.
We are aware that many people are believers in their world outlook even though
they rarely go to church. The tip of the iceberg are the people you see in
church, and that tip creates the image. These are people permanently in church,
often retired people, mainly elderly women. But the iceberg is one object, not
two, even though most of it cannot be seen. Also that babushka that looks older
than the world — in fact she is younger than the Revolution. She never
attended a church school. She memorized no catechism. As a young woman she
never went into a church. But sometime in her life she became part of the
visible church. There is always a large group of believers who are struggling
with this decision, and slowly, as they become older, they begin attending
church. The invisible part of the church is much younger, but today they more
quickly become part of the visible church. They aren’t waiting for retirement.
The democratic events going on in our country help this process. We see more
and more people coming who never came before, never showed any sign of belief.
Now they want to belong to the church. It seems like a fresh development,
something completely new, but actually it has deep roots.”

Toward the end of the
conversation, Archbishop Kirill said, “Jim, I am disappointed. There is one
question every journalist asks but you haven’t asked it.”

“What question is that?”

“How many of the people in
church are actual believers?”

“All right, your Grace —
one last question: How many people are actual believers.”

“I’m glad you asked. My
answer is I don’t know. Yesterday you saw quite a lot of people in the church.
You might say that some of them were just tourists. I don’t think more than
twenty percent of the people were crossing themselves. Many of the women
weren’t wearing scarfs. But a lot of those who seem to be just watching are on
the border of belief. They don’t stand there for two hours just because it is a
beautiful old building. Something draws them. They are not practicing
believers, but they are there. But what about those who crossed themselves? Can
we say they are believers? It may be that they were just conforming to norms of
church behavior. Who can say who is a believer and who is not? We don’t know.
Nobody knows. God knows.”

We
said good-bye and hurried to catch the train to Minsk.

Minsk,
July 27: We arrived at 10:30 p.m., and
were met by Fr. John, a middle-aged priest with a goatee, very gentle and
proper-looking, who brought us to the Intourist Hotel. It was almost midnight
when we ate supper. The dining room had a live rock band producing music so
loud that we could only talk during the breaks. At one point, the band sang, in
English, “The Final Countdown.”

Minsk,
July 28: We ate breakfast early with Fr.
Leonid, a middle-aged, animated man. Afterward a tour guide drove us all over
the city giving us a monotonous drill of important sights with many dates,
measurements and numbers. Vasili translated in a sing-song voice. At one point
we passed a new “micro-city” in the north of Minsk. “It has everything a person
needs,” said the guide, “shops, cinemas, clinics, day-care centers, schools,
athletic facilities.” “Does it have a church?” I asked. The guide was lost for
words, then said with obvious embarrassment that this was something local
people have to work out with the state. Vasili, suppressing laughter, barely
managed to translate the reply.

Under
all the statistics the guide heaped on us was the fact that Minsk, though
nearly a thousand years old, was so flattened during the last world war that
afterwards there was serious discussion about moving the entire city to a new
location and starting on fresh foundations. In the end it was decided, however,
to build at the same turn in the River Svisloch. Except for a few old buildings
that have been restored, Minsk today looks thirty years old.

No
one place in Russia brought home to me so starkly the horror of war as our visit
in the late morning to Khatyn, about 35 miles north of Minsk. Khatyn today is a
memorial commemorating Nazi atrocities in White Russia. Hitler’s plan had been
to take White Russia, kill 75 percent of the population, and bring the rest to
Germany to do forced labor. In fact 2,230,000 people were killed, one White
Russian in four. The Germans used a scorched-earth policy, simply levelling
villages and slaughtering the inhabitants. Hundreds of villages were totally
destroyed, many never re-built.

Khatyn,
one of the erased villages, is a shrine to all who perished. In the case of
Khatyn, the German soldiers appeared one morning, herded the villagers into a
barn and burned them alive. Those who ran out of the flames were shot down with
machine guns placed around the barn. Then all the houses were destroyed. Two
children survived and one man, Joseph Komensky, a black smith who happened to
be out of the village at the time. Returning home, he found the dead body of
his eleven-year-old son in the barn. A huge statue depicts him with his dead
child in his arms.

The
foundation of each house is outlined in concrete. Each contains a chimney with
a single leaden bell. The bells are timed to ring once every thirty seconds, a
dull death-knell tolling steadily as visitors walk through the village. There
are burial stones for each village destroyed, and a long wall with barred
windows, each window commemorating Nazi concentration camps that dotted White
Russia. Visitors place fresh flowers daily at every stone and window.

There
is finally a large flat square stone slab with three birch trees. Where the
fourth tree would have been is an eternal flame. One out of four.

From
Nancy’s journal: “Though crowded with visitors, Khatyn is a hushed place. As we
walked, I thought these people are not interested in fighting another war. They
are ordinary, good people, they go on vacation, they care for their families,
they love their country. Yet we in the west are preparing to do this very
thing, to burn these innocent people alive in their own homes because we have
labelled them communists and we think the world would be a better place without
them. We are being lied to, I thought over and over again. The monstrosity of
this fact pounded in my head. Lied to. Lied to.”

Before
we left Nancy started to cry. Fr. Leonid rushed up to her, kissing her hand
twice, and said, “Thank you, thank you!” Among those who died in the war were
his sister and brother. He told us later of the disbelief he has experienced
when describing to people in the west Russia’s war experience. “But perhaps
they will believe you.”

Back
in Minsk, we visited the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, being renovated for the
Millennium. The interior was slung with scaffolding and draped with canvas. The
place was filled with priests, workers, and worshippers. Actually, though the
air was musty with plaster dust, it had a jolly atmosphere. Fr. Leonid said the
people who are working on the church, although professionals, are also members
of the church. We went downstairs to the baptistery where there are long
couches to accommodate those waiting to have their children baptized. In Minsk
the demand for baptism is high and constant. As we left, a group of people with
two babies came down for baptism. “And this is Tuesday,” said Fr. Leonid. “You
should see Saturday and Sunday!”

We
went to Metropolitan Filaret’s residence, a new building with an open central
courtyard. Several priests met us, among them white-bearded Bishop Constantine,
former abbot of a nearby monastery, who is tall and thin and venerable-looking.

Tomorrow
we drive to Brest, stopping on the way at the Monastery of the Assumption at
Zhirovitsy.

Minsk,
July 29: After an early breakfast, we went
with Fathers Leonid and John to the Diocesan Residence to pick up Bishop
Constantine, then stopped off at the Cathedral. We got a glimpse of about 30
people at morning Liturgy at a temporary location in a hallway, with candles
and make-shift iconostasis. The plasterers were hard at work as the singing
continued.

On
the way out of Minsk we visited the Alexander Nevsky Church and met its dean,
Father Victor Bekarevitch, an older man of incredible spirit and enthusiasm
wearing a white cassock and gold cross. He told us all about his family, his
children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, how many sons and sons-in-law
are priests, and the history of his church and the story of the saint it is
named after, even a story about a particular church in Siberia. He was
unstoppable, like a bottle of champagne that had popped its cork and was showering
everyone. “Yes,” he said, “I am a real talker. But you have to understand that
this is only because I was baptized in boiling water! I can’t help my
temperament.” He patted the top of his head.

We
talked about living in big families. “They are best! One child is nothing. Two
is only half a family. Three is a little better. But six is a collective farm!
We have six.”

When
he heard I was a writer, he warned me to be careful. “It might be better to be
a robber. The robber does his harm once and it is over. But writers continue to
live on in their work and can destroy long after they die. I bless you to be a
writer, only please write things that take care of life and inspire people to
have many children.”

On
the way out of Minsk, all the Russians in our van prayed for a safe journey. It
was joyous and hearty singing that reminded me of the soulful singing of
Orthodox Jews at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.

Most
of the way we were on a four-lane highway driving through pine and birch
forest. After some time, we stopped to stretch our legs. Bishop Constantine got
out and crossed the highway to walk through the forest on the other side. The
rest of us wandered through the pines and birches on our side. Nancy and I went
our own way, enjoying the smell of the woods and the feel of leaves and soft
earth under our feet. We felt we had a little taste of what it might be like to
go mushrooming, a favorite summer pastime in Russia. After about a quarter
hour, returning to our van, we looked across the highway and saw Bishop
Constantine crossing the four lanes of busy traffic, holding his white linen
cap on his head, his long white beard and black robes flying. He barely escaped
a big tractor trailer whose driver was leaning on his horn. “That was not a
warning,” said Vasili. “It was a greeting.” We got in the mini-bus and sped
down the highway, soon passing the tractor trailer. Sure enough, when we
passed, the driver honked again, leaning out of his window and waving at Bishop
Constantine with a big smile and shouts of greeting.

“My
heart sings whenever I approach the monastery,” said Fr. Leonid as we neared
the village of Zhirovitsy. “It is my second motherland. It is even my first
motherland. You should see it on the great feast days! Thousands come, pilgrims
from far away.”

The
Monastery of the Assumption, the home of about forty nuns and fifteen monks, is
surrounded by sweet-smelling orchards, gardens, and bee-hives. Several monks
were busy in the garden. Two industrious nuns were scrubbing pickle barrels.
The Abbot, Archimandrite Stephen, another possessor of laughing eyes and a
brightly lit-up face, pointed out a family of storks in a huge nest up in a
nearby tree.

The
Abbot took us to the principal church where he told us the story of the
miraculous icon that is displayed there. “On May 20, 1470, some children taking
care of cows were playing near a pear tree. It was where the main altar now
stands. There was a stream flowing from the tree and light coming from the
water. The children approached the light and found a tiny icon of the Mother of
God and her child. They took it to the landowner who put the icon in a box.
That night he decided to show the icon to his house guests. But when he opened
the box it was gone. The next day the children found it again in the same way.
This time the landowner took the icon to the bishop. A wooden church was built
over the site where the icon appeared, but fifty years later, a terrible fire
destroyed the forest, the church and everything inside. Everyone sadly realized
that the icon was also gone. A short time later, however, village children
discovered a beautiful lady — it was Mary — sitting on a large rock. She had
the icon in her hands and gave it to the children. The children ran to fetch a
priest. Soon after another church was erected over the site of Mary’s
appearance. That stone became an altar.” The icon’s fame reached Rome. In 1730,
the Pope awarded a crown to the icon. The tiny icon is here, an object of
veneration to pilgrims every day. [reproduce an icon of this event?]

After
pausing under a huge tree near the church that had been planted by Peter the
Great, we had a wonderful meal with the abbot: vegetarian borscht and
vegetables wrapped in grape leaves. I asked the abbot about the life of his
community. “We are only instruments in the hands of the Mother of God,” he said
with a very joyful expression. “She is our Mother Superior. Every morning,
before the Holy Liturgy, we ask her blessing. We approach her icon and pray,
‘Mother of God, help us!’ The choir sings, ‘Lord have mercy on us.’ After the
service the flame is carried from the icon to the kitchen to light the fire.”

I
asked about all the pilgrims coming, which must impose a lot of work for the
small community. “There is a lot to do, but few real things to do. Our
Lord finds people who are capable of fulfilling his plan. Maybe they have no
education, perhaps nothing but their heart, yet God calls them to be pastors. I
am such a person. I come from a peasant family. I came to the priesthood only
through the faith of my mother.”

Leaving
Bishop Constantine at the monastery, the rest of us continued on the way to
Brest, a long ride, everyone but the driver napping on and off as we passed
through the White Russian farmland. Sometimes it seemed we were in Iowa or
Nebraska.

Brest,
July 29: We reached Brest as the sun was
setting and went directly to the Cathedral of St. Simeon the Stylite, where we
were met by three men belonging to the church council and two priests: Fr.
Michael, whose smile revealed a number of gold teeth; and Fr. Arkady, a huge
man, really bear-sized, but very quiet and with gentle eyes. One of the church
council members had such a Polish face that he could have been the brother of
Pope John Paul II. After a few minutes, a car came spinning into the church yard.
Out stepped Fr. Eugene, Dean of the Cathedral, an older man with basset-hound
eyes, a squarish goatee, and a head of wavy gray hair. He wears two crosses. He
greeted us with emotion. Then Fr. Michael presented Nancy with a bouquet of
roses and a bottle of perfume.

We
went into the church as the choir began singing, a choir which just a few
minutes before had been a group of babushkas and old men sitting outside under
the trees in the church yard. The choir director, however, was a young man
wearing tennis shoes and carrying a bulging brief case. Fr. Eugene greeted and
blessed us, then surprised me by asking if I would say a few words. I said how
wonderful it was to be received like Christ, as had happened to us daily
through our travels in Russia.

We
went to the Intourist Hotel afterward, accompanied by Fr. Eugene, Fr. Michael,
Fr. Arkady, the three church council members and, still with us from Minsk, Fr.
Leonid, Fr. John, and Fr. John’s son, who had driven the van. It was a real
parade with Fr. Eugene, in full priestly regalia, star of the show. Once in the
hotel, Fr. Eugene negotiated with the women at the desk for our room and keys.
He is a man of amazing charm and humor — many appreciative eyes were on him
while we were in the lobby. The staff obviously enjoy his teasing manner. Then
the whole parade accompanied Nancy and me to our room, which turned out to be a
small suite. Everyone checked the rooms carefully to make sure that all was in
order. Fr. Eugene was unhappy with the two single beds separated by a night
table. He removed the night table and two members of the parish council pushed
the beds together. “That’s better!” said Fr. Eugene. Having discovered that
Nancy speaks some German, he said to her, “Zusammen, zusammen!” —
together, together!

We
went downstairs for a big meal with many toasts and much laughter. Fr. Eugene
sat at the head of the table, placing Nancy at his right where he made sure
that she participated in every toast.

A
match for Vasili as a story teller, Fr. Eugene told us a joke about of a woman
who was weeping bitterly at the funeral of her husband. “The priest came up and
said, ‘Don’t cry so hard. Surely God will save him.’ ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you
don’t know why I am crying. It is only because he didn’t die sooner. Then I could
have married a good man!’”

Vasili
recalled a man for whom things weren’t going well in life. “‘I want to get
married but I have no possibilities,’ said this poor man. ‘I can buy a goat but
I have no inclination.’ Let us drink so that our possibilities coincide with
our inclinations.”

After
supper, we said good night to our crowd of hosts. Nancy and I decided to
explore various streets and parks in the neighborhood. On the way back we
enjoyed watching a couple in front of us playing with their two little
daughters.

At
bed time Nancy said she felt like she had been Queen for a Day. The meal had
been like the wedding banquet we never had, with Fr. Eugene blessing us as
Abraham must have blessed his children at their weddings. Being with Russian
priests, she said, gave her a new understanding of patriarchy. “For me
patriarchy has meant men running everything and the victimization of women. But
to call a Russian priest a patriarch is to recognize him as an interpreter of
reality, a person whom we trust to explain the truth of God.” She said that
from now on she will be sensitive to the difference between a patriarch who is
spirit-filled and someone who is simply hungry for power and deaf to women.

Brest,
July 30: The parade — all eleven of us —
reassembled for breakfast. Fr. Eugene asked, “And you had happy dreams, yes? Zusammen?”

He
told us something of himself. He is forty years married and forty years a
priest. As secretary to Metropolitan Filaret for the Brest District, one of
twelve districts in the diocese, he has responsibility for sixty parishes. “It
is a big responsibility, but my wife gives me strength. Her name is Nadeshda.
It means hope. She rules my life.”

I
asked what he hoped to do in the future. “I like what I am doing. It is enough.
I only hope not to become senile. I want to celebrate a last Holy Liturgy and
then die, and it will be fine if this happens when I am 215 years old. By then
perhaps we will be living in a world where you can knock on any door and borrow
what you need and no one will need to lock their door.”

We
went out to Brest fortress, a huge war memorial. Here local partisans, with
little food and water, held off the Nazis weeks after the rest of White Russia
was occupied. It has been named a Hero Fortress, as many cities are Hero Cities
— Brest, Minsk, Smolensk and Leningrad among them. Fr. Arkady gave us some
flowers to lay at the eternal flame. We strolled up the long walkway with Fr.
Eugene, casually talking. There were many tourist groups, all Russian. As we
approached the flame, Fr. Eugene suddenly became silent and walked up the few
steps as though he were approaching an altar. He laid down his flowers, as did
we, crossed himself, and prayed aloud. Guides had been addressing tourist
groups standing nearby but they immediately stopped talking, turning toward the
flame and standing in reverential stillness. When Fr. Eugene’s prayer was over,
he bowed and crossed himself again and walked away. The tourist groups also
left. It was as though Fr. Eugene had become the priest for everyone.

Across
the stream from the Fortress are the ruins of a Fourteenth Century village.
Archaeologists are still busy digging, looking for the ancient church.

We
went home and rested. Luncheon, our last meal in White Russia, was long and
cheerful. This time Nancy was seated at the head of the table, with Fr. Eugene
at her right. Though we had only been in Brest overnight, we had become
friends. It is remarkable how quickly you can feel kinship with people whose
faith you share. He offered a toast in recognition of “the world-wide community
of believers which knows no boundaries or national differences.”

Soon
Fr. Eugene was talking about holiness. “Holiness is what happens to people who
open themselves up to God’s love and to the power of the Holy Spirit. On your
own you can only love a few people but with the Holy Spirit you can even love
your enemies. You need to be guided by reason, but even more you need the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are given freedom, but by ourselves we can use
that freedom in terrible ways. We can do harmful things to ourselves and to
others. I remember what William James said, ‘If my faith were the faith of a
woman washing underwear, it would have been greater than the essence of my
mind.’ Faith, life, community and family — all these are expressions of
submission to the will of God. In God’s will we can live in holiness. God grant
that we live in God’s will! God make us holy!”

All
eleven of us went together to the train station and waited on the platform.
Nancy and I sat on our luggage, watching people bustling all over the place —
soldiers, parents with their children, old folks. When the train pulled in at
6:10, we found our compartment, carried in our luggage, and went outside again
to say good-bye. Fr. John, who had been rather shy (certainly camera-shy) came
up and, addressing Nancy in German, said, “We are so thankful that you came,
and we wish you and your family the very best health. God bless you.” Fr.
Eugene gave us a solemn blessing and then hugged us in turn, making us promise
one day to come back. “But next time,” he said, “bring your children.”

On
the train back to Moscow, Vasili told us the story of an academician and a
priest sharing the same compartment in a train. “The academician took out a
bottle of yoghurt and two sandwiches and offered to share them with the priest.
The priest opened his sack and took out salmon, caviar, roast chicken,
sausages, vodka, and cognac. ‘Here,’ said the priest, ‘take what you like.’ The
academician said, ‘I am a member of the Academy of Sciences. I have a car, a
chauffeur, a dacha, and I am paid 600 rubles a month, but I can’t afford all
that! How do you do it?’ ‘My dear son,’ said the priest, ‘you have to take more
distance from the state!’”

Moscow,
July 31: After twelve hours on the train,
we arrived in Moscow at 6:30 a.m. and went to the Ukraina Hotel. We’ve had time
for baths and writing postcards.

On
the train I read an essay on icons by Vladimir Soloukhin, a contemporary
Russian novelist and short-story writer: “I think that what the artist most
often painted was prayer….a worshipper approaches an icon to pray and finds
that his prayer is already expressed and translated into the painting. What is
expressed on the panel exactly corresponds to the state of the worshipper’s own
soul. And in this exists not only the enigma but also the strength and
persuasion of icon-painting, all of which escapes analysis if the icon be
judged only with reference to line, subject and composition.”xxxi

I
read the passage to Vasili. He nodded and said, “I know a woman, a Party
member, who was in a coma for a month. When she came out of the coma, her first
words were, ‘I want to paint an icon.’”

On
the wall of our room there is a fine oil painting from the 1950s that shows a
bird’s-eye view of the Russian countryside. In the distance, under a blue
summer sky, is a village. Rising over the houses a white church tower blossoms
into a dark blue cupola, but the cross that would top the cupola is missing. In
the foreground of the painting is a pine forest. Two wide paths cut through the
trees, intersecting at right angles. Looking at the painting, I realized that
the cross that is missing from the church steeple has been cut into the woods. [photo
of the painting] Once again, a Russian seems to be speaking through images
rather than words. In this case he seems to be saying, yes, one can remove a
religious symbol from a building, but no one can remove it from our hearts.

At
five Vasili takes us to the airport. It won’t be easy to say goodbye.

vii. In February 1987, a public opinion poll in the United
States indicated that two-thirds of the American people believed that the
Soviet Union would like to invade and occupy the United States and that 72
percent preferred all-out nuclear war to life under communist rule. See John M.
Swomley, “Myths that Separate Us,” Fellowship, Vol. 53 (December, 1987),
5-6.

viii. These include the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which
runs a US-USSR Reconciliation Program through which information is available on
a wide variety of opportunities for contact and education. FOR, Box 271, Nyack,
NY 10960.

“May I infect you a disease?” Thousands of Londoners have been receiving postcards with this alarming proposal from their Dutch neighbors across the North Sea. Instead of wooden shoes and windmills, the picture side of the card depicts a mushroom cloud rising over the word “Europe.”

The curious disease being so actively transmitted is Hollanditis. It was first identified by a distressed American journalist who suspected the Dutch origins of a European epidemic whose symptoms have become increasingly familiar: anxiety in the presence of nuclear weapons, exhaustion with decades of futile negotiations to ban such weapons, distress at the prospect of a nuclear war which would devastate all of Europe, and a massive surge of resistance against such a possibility.

Without a doubt, Hollanditis is a highly contagious malady of conscience. Millions of Europeans have been stricken and the number of victims is rapidly growing. Sufferers find their lives have been changed as they commit themselves to the elimination of nuclear weapons, starting in their own countries. In the process, they are becoming a powerful political force.

The illness has been seen by some commentators as an occasion of comfort to Moscow’s leadership. Yet the countries linked in the Warsaw Pact are presently preoccupied with their own contagion, the dreaded Polanditis. Its symptoms do not as yet include special attention to the arms race, but at the root of the illness is a similar discomfort with life in the embrace of the superpowers. Neither Holland nor Poland find present “security arrangements” offer an experience or prospect of real security. As a bitter joke puts it, “Those Americans and Russians are more courageous and resolute than ever—they are ready to fight to the last European.”

American observers, seeking to explain the outbreak in NATO’s share of Europe, claim we are witnessing a resurgence of that insidious strain known as Isolationism. More careful observation yields different conclusions, however. In fact, Hollanditis is not a disease of avoidance and escape but of challenge and engagement. Far from being a terminal illness, it is an outbreak of healing which seeks the mending of relationships and the easing of borders. It rejects preparations for a war which might be the world’s last, and certainly would be Europe’s last.

A Decision for First-Strike Weaponry

A giant step toward nuclear war occurred in December 1979, when eleven NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels accepted a proposal which would place 464 Cruise and 108 Pershing 2 missiles in Western Europe, beginning in 1983. It was a momentous event in the history of the arms race as it marked the decision to abandon a policy based on deterrence (through which the US and USSR restrained each other with the prospect of “mutually assured destruction”) to a “first strike” policy through which the US could inflict far greater destruction on the USSR than it would experience in response.

The key to this new development is new military technology, an extraordinary example of which is the Cruise missile: 14-feet long, 28 inches wide, able to skim over treetops, wind through river valleys, and slip under the eye of radar. It requires a launching vehicle as small and inconspicuous as a milk truck. Before the Soviet Union realized it was under attack, cruise missiles could be exploding on target, whether they be Soviet missile sites, military centers or cities.

Augmenting these would be the Pershing 2, more powerful and faster, though its launch can be observed by satellite and its target projected by computer calculation. Its flying time from West Europe to Moscow is a scant five minutes. In about the time it takes to make a cup of coffee, Soviet officials would have to decide on their response, which would doubtless include an attack on all known or suspected nuclear bases in Western Europe. Put simply, a hair trigger is now being attached to the machinery of nuclear war.

The US has defended its plans in the vocabulary of home-improvement (NATO needs “modernization”) and of the nursery (these weapons are “a new generation”). The claim is that they are merely a necessary response to balance the Soviet Union’s SS-20 missiles, 250 of which are aimed at Western Europe, and each with three warheads. This argument completely ignores the 400 long-range Poseidon warheads and 142 Polaris warheads stationed on US and British submarines in the European region, as does President Reagan’s November proposal for the withdrawal of US and Soviet land-based missiles. According to former US National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, “The SS-20 did not and does not give the Soviet Union any military capability against Europe alone that it did not possess in overflowing measure before a single SS-20 was deployed.”

Increasingly it is conceded that the proposed new missiles serve no essential military purpose but that preparations to produce them and plans to place them in Europe serve as “bargaining chips” in forcing the Soviet Union to pull out its SS-20s. This is the latest version of the familiar argument that the only way to slow down the race is to speed it up. For 35 years this approach has only produced more weaponry and faster. farther reaching, more elusive missiles. What the new weapons really do is raise the tension level, sharply reduce security, and make nuclear war more likely.

For Europeans, war is not at all an academic matter. These weapons are targeted where they live and they have their many memories of the savagery of war when weapons were far slower and smaller. As one of the architects of the Dutch disarmament movement, Laurens Hogebrink says, “It may sound strange, but there has not been a single day in years when I have not thought of the Second World War and realized that what happened is a normal part of human history and will happen again if we don’t prevent it.”

Europeans increasingly believe that the arms race is out of control and that their only real defense is protest and a policy of calculated steps toward disarmament.

The Home Country of Hollanditis

Nowhere has the nuclear disarmament movement been as prolonged, deeply rooted and politically influential as in the Netherlands. The groups responsible are numerous and diverse, with participation ranging from the general in charge of Holland’s Army War College to political groups spread from left to right. But the primary source of Hollanditis is the Inter-Church Peace Council (Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad, known throughout Holland simply as IKV). IKV was founded in 1966 by the Protestant and Catholic Churches of the Netherlands as a conscience-forming project on issues of human rights, development and peace. For ten years its work centered on preparing an annual Peace Week held in churches through-out the country in late September.

In the mid-1970s, when East-West relations began a new decline, IKV leaders took a fresh look at their work and began to see an opportunity for Holland to play a part in breaking the deadlock in the arms race. As years of negotiations seeking simultaneous reductions by both sides had failed dismally, the option of unilateral initiatives needed effective promotion: concrete steps taken by states to reduce tension and mistrust and create an atmosphere in which disarmament agreements could be reached.

With 1977’s Peace Week, IKV launched a campaign for such an initiative, which was summarized with the slogan: “Help rid the world of nuclear weapons—let it begin in the Netherlands.” Its adopted symbol was a huge bomb being pushed away by a determined family of four. Its message was clear: ordinary people aren’t as powerless against the arms race as we usually think. The idea has taken hold. Today you cannot walk down a street in any Dutch town or city without seeing the slogan and symbol displayed on clothes, shoulder bags and living room windows. In four years, a network of 400 local groups have sprung up, taking the IKV campaign door-to-door with organizers well prepared for the questions and anxieties neighbors may express.

One of the great hopes within IKV was that church leadership would not leave the issue to IKV and its local groups but would recognize a pastoral responsibility for themselves and for the church structures they direct. The most notable consequence to date in this regard was a year-long process involving thousands of parish evenings in congregations of the Netherlands Reformed Church that, in November 1980, resulted in a pastoral letter in which the general synod of the country’s largest protestant denomination condemned not only the use of nuclear weapons but their possession:

We consider it necessary to plead for an approach in which negotiation goes hand in hand with steps which clearly set us upon the road to disarmament. Since it has turned out to be impossible to reach multilateral decisions toward such steps, they should be taken unilaterally. They should be unambiguous in intention. They should not only point in the direction to be taken; they should testify to a readiness to take that road ourselves. We consider that the de-nuclearization of the Netherlands would be such an unambiguous step. We call for you to support this proposal.

The Church then confessed the faith basis for its position:

We have no illusions about political systems from which we wish to remain free and which we fear. But as believers we can say: we can live with our Lord no matter what the political system may be. In no case does the defense of our freedoms justify basing our security on the possible destruction of everything dear to us and to our opponents and on an assault on the creation.

Since 1979, IKV has addressed itself to the various political parties of the Netherlands, seeking to influence the content of their election programs as well as the work of the parties in the Dutch Parliament. With half the Dutch people now opposing all nuclear weapons in the country and two-thirds opposing the new NATO weaponry, the political impact has been considerable. Just prior to the NATO meeting in 1979, the Parliament opposed the Prime Minister in his support of the NATO proposal. When the government sought to placate public opinion by deferring until 1981 the question of whether the new weapons should be based in Holland, public outrage was so intense that the government barely survived a vote of confidence in Parliament. Following the national election in May, a new three-party coalition government was produced which was more critical of nuclear weapons than its predecessor. With opposition to nuclear weapons remaining intense, the government is certain to again put off acceptance of new NATO weapons.

“Of course it is a political fact,” comments Laurens Hogebrink of the IKV campaign, “that this postponement policy can go on forever. One can safely take it as certain that Holland’s share of the missiles will never enter the country. But what the Dutch peace movement wants is not a national ‘clean-hands’ policy, with. the government agreeing with NATO but making an exception for itself. We want independent Dutch initiatives to stop the whole NATO program. Increasingly this requires a campaign. beyond the Dutch borders.” Beginning in 1979, IKV began to internationalize its campaign. The results of the process include the series of massive rallies in European capitals in the fall of 1981—the largest of which was Holland’s own; more than 400,000 filling Amsterdam in a protest so festive that one observer called it “a brief encounter between heaven and earth.”

West Germany, NATO’s Center Piece

Holland is a country of doll-house measurements only ten percent the size of California. The Pentagon could manage to get along without the Dutch patch of Europe were it cleared of NATO explosives down to the last matchstick. Holland’s neighbor West Germany, on the other hand, is a quite different matter. It is NATO’s major base in Europe and the intended location of 220 of the Cruise and Pershing missiles. Its eastern border is the main point of contact between NATO and the Warsaw Pact and has often been a place of bloodshed and death for those trying to escape to the west. Since West Germany’s founding, its politics and press have been dominated by anti-communism and fear of Soviet expansion.

Yet in Bonn last October 10, 300,000 people gathered in opposition to more nuclear weapons in their country or elsewhere in Europe

One could see at a glance that Hollanditis was at work, not only because IKV in the Netherlands had been a partner in the rally’s organization, but because a familiar symbol had been borrowed by the German organizers: a family pushing away the bomb. Rally speakers included theologian Helmut Gollwitzer, former mayor of Berlin, Heinrich Alberts, and Erhard Eppler, a member of the executive committee of the country’s ruling Social Democratic party, present despite the opposition of Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

As with the disarmament movement in Holland, participants represented an immense diversity with as many reasons to disagree among themselves as to rally together: church people, trade unionists, young people of the “no future” generation, ecologists, youth groups of diverse political convictions. The rally’s impetus came from groups both associated with the churches: Aktiongemeinschaft Dienst für den Frieden (the Action Committee of Service for Peace, a coalition of 12 religious peace groups, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Christians for Disarmament and the Live Without Weapons Movement) and Aktion Sühnezeichen (Action Reconciliation), a movement founded after the war to offer repentant, voluntary service to victims of the Nazis.

In 1980, Aktion Sühnezeichen was the principal organizer of West Germany’s first nationally coordinated Peace Week, with support from six regional synods of the Lutheran Church. It was observed in more than 4,000 towns and cities, involving thousands of local organizers and reaching millions of Germans. Its theme was “Making Peace Without Armaments.”

Already 150,000 Germans have signed a statement, modeled on an appeal issued by the 1975 Assembly of the World Council of Churches: “1 am prepared to live without the protection of military armaments. I wish to take a stand in our country for the political development of peace without arms.” Ten times that number have now signed the Krefelder Appeal, asking the Bonn government to cancel its support of the NATO decision.

Another impressive peace statistic is the 54,000 young West Germans who in 1980 choose civilian rather than military service—12 percent of the eligible youth. Volkmar Deile, secretary of Aktion Su”hnezeichen, anticipates that the 1981 percentage will reach 15 percent.

Theologians have been active in both the Dutch and German disarmament movements. Among the most prominent of these has been Dorothee Sölle of Hamburg, who has taught on both sides of the Atlantic. Countering anti-American sentiment that has been growing in Germany, she reminds her numerous listeners of “the other America—not the America of the generals but of Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan, the America of religious conviction that you have to obey God rather than men.”

Sölle anticipates growing recourse in Europe to nonviolent civil disobedience, which may become massive if the new missiles are ever delivered. “These are not entirely rational structures we are trying to influence,” she says. “The nuclear states are really dinosaurs. It is- ridiculous to expect dinosaurs to go politely to the conference table and make rational decisions. First you have to convince them that there is no future in being a dinosaur. Human life is for humans, and if you are going to be human, you have to give up the idea of absolute power and having everything the way you want it to be. In real life, you have to think about sacrifice.”

Germany’s church leadership has been more reluctant to enter the disarmament debate than local congregations. Official statements have stressed that “service for peace can be offered either with or without arms.” One recent statement suggests the possible importance of unilateral initiatives for disarmament, but is without specific proposals. Konrad Lübbert, pastor of a local Lutheran church and secretary of West Germany’s Fellowship of Reconciliation, compares the present crisis of conscience among German Christians to the one experienced in the Hitler years, when Christians opposing Nazism finally broke with the country’s religious structure and founded the Confessing Church. “If the leadership of the established churches once again cannot see the priority of human life, if once again it fails to resist the ideologies and methods of mass destruction, then once again there will be a break.” But Lübbert’s hope remains strong that such a division can be avoided and that a disarmament consensus will be achieved in the German churches similar to the one that has emerged in the Netherlands Reformed Church. The problem, he says, is the intensity of anti-communist anxiety. Several years ago critics of Lübbert unsuccessfully sought to remove him from his pastorship for a sermon in which he explained that the Parable of the Good Samaritan today would be the Parable of the Good Communist. “The Samaritan represented to the Jewish people,” he explained, “what the Communist represents to us—the ultimate threat, the person you cannot respect or trust and with whom there is no common human bond.”

England and the Re-birth of CND

The most striking characteristic of the British disarmament movement has been its phenomenal growth over the past eighteen months. Almost forgotten since the Ban the Bomb days of the early ’60s, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has sprung back to life, with its membership and number of local groups growing ten-fold since 1980. There are now a thousand CND groups in Britain. The CND disarmament march in London in October drew a quarter million people. In 1980, it had been 70,000, and the year before 600.

A major catalyst was the British government’s 1979 campaign to promote civil defense through publication of a citizen’s guide, Protect and Survive. Historian E.P. Thompson responded to it in a widely read paperback, Protest and Survive. In case of nuclear war, Thompson wrote, the population of Britain is invited by their government “to go down to the cellar and make a cubbyhole of old doors and planks, covered with sandbags, books and heavy furniture, into which they must creep with food and water for 14 days… All this ignores the principle effects of nuclear weapons. Within a certain distance of detonation, all houses, cars, clothes, the hair on dogs, cats and persons will spontaneously ignite, while at the same time the blast will bring the houses tumbling down upon the cubbyholes.”

Thompson helped bring home to many the realization that Britain is one of a number of governments busily preparing for nuclear warfare, which political leaders plan to survive in deep, costly shelters while letting ordinary people, who thought the government’s job was to protect its people, burn to death or perish under the rubble of their devastated homes.Thompson has since become a leading advocate of European Nuclear Disarmament (END), a network promoting the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free zone reaching “from Poland to Portugal.”

While CND has counterparts elsewhere, a uniquely British effort has been the declaration by local Councils of their own jurisdictions as Nuclear Free Zones in which the transport, production, and placement of nuclear weapons is prohibited. Since September 1980, 120 local Councils, including some of the main cities of Britain, have created such zones. While not binding on the central government, the Councils have expressed their refusal to implement national defense plans and at the same time dramatized local opposition to nuclear weaponry, whether US or British. According to Hamish Walker, secretary of Britain’s Fellowship of Reconciliation, “more of the country is now covered with nuclear free zones than not.”

The message is being heard at least by the opposition parties. In 1981 the Labour Party declared its support for complete unilateral nuclear disarmament and elected as party leader Michael Foot, a longtime opponent of British nuclear policies. The Liberal Party, ignoring advice of their leaders, voted against deployment of the Cruise missile in Britain.

The main base of the British disarmament movement is in the country’s powerful trade unions, many of which have formally endorsed CND’s campaign. Individual religious leaders are often found at the movement’s center. Perhaps Britain’s best-known peace campaigner is CND secretary Bruce Kent, a Catholic priest and a former secretary to the Cardinal of London.

Within the churches, nuclear weapons have increasingly become an issue of debate. Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie has stressed that the purpose of weapons is to kill and the purpose of nuclear weapons is mass killing. “This is evil,” he says plainly, “and cannot be accepted.” The British Council of Churches has called for the dismantling of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent as a unilateral step intended to encourage countries without nuclear weapons to remain nuclear-free.

The 1981 conference of the Christian CND drew 900 religious peace workers to Coventry Cathedral to “Profess and Survive.” The ruins of the old church, a bombed-out shell on the alter of which has been carved the words, “Father, forgive,” offered a poignant reminder of the horror of the last world war.

A meeting of British church leadership is being planned for 1982 to consider issues such as the possession of present nuclear weapons as well as the 160 Cruise missiles intended for British bases. One subject to be considered is the IKV campaign in the Netherlands and the possibility of the churches establishing a similar structure in Britain.

British activists are already preparing to undertake direct action against Cruise missiles if the decision to install them is not withdrawn. As a sign of things to come, a group of women recently set up camp alongside a major site for the missiles, the US airbase at Greenham Common. They are asking the British Broadcasting Corporation to televise a debate concerning the new missiles.

Another inventive disarmament action was a thousand-mile Peace Pilgrimage from Iona to Canterbury set up last year by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Joan Baez sang a benefit concert for the project at a church across from the houses of Parliament in London. In Canterbury, the pacifist pilgrims were received with a large Peace Festival. Receiving the pilgrims as part of the Cathedral’s annual Whitsun service, the Dean of Canterbury, Victor de Waal, told worshippers that their special guests were not to be dismissed as idealists out of touch with the real world. “These pilgrims ask us to face squarely the moral options before us. They have themselves faced the fear, and ask us to face it too, the deep fear of living unarmed in a world that is threatening and dangerous. They say to us that only by going into that fear and through it, is there any possibility of turning an enemy into a friend.”

Hope for a Nordic Zone Barred to Nuclear Weapons

At Europe’s northern edge, support is growing for the creation of a Nordic Nuclear Weapons Free Zone. The proposal has won the backing of the Labor Parties in each of the Scandinavian countries and was the subject of discussion at a seminar of disarmament problems arranged in Janurary 1980 by the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. The proposal is that Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland bind themselves by treaty not to manufacture or possess nuclear weapons and to seek from the nuclear states a commitment never to use nuclear weapons in this zone.

For all practical purposes, the zone has already been in existence for quite some time. By act of Parliament in the early 19605, Sweden—which has managed not to go to war since 1814 and which belongs to no military alliance—chose not to develop nuclear weaponry. Neutral Finland has never even debated the possibility of possessing them. While both Norway and Denmark are NATO members, neither has permitted US nuclear weapons in their countries.

Rallies in support of such a zone, seen as a step toward creating a nuclear-weapons-free Europe, occurred in October in both Stockholm and Oslo and drew 15,000 supporters. This past summer disarmament advocates in Denmark initiated a demonstration of similar hopes that made its way to Paris, where 15,000 marched into the Place de la Bastille on Hiroshima Day. In Copenhagen in December, 40,000 rallied in support of the nuclear-free-zone—the largest demonstration in Denmark since the end of World War II. The Danish elections in the same month brought from eleven to twenty the representation of the Socialist People’s Party, whose campaign advocated the creation of the nuclear-free-zone’. “The growing feeling here,” commented Hans Nebel, a pastor who is secretary of the Danish Fellowship of Reconciliation and active with the Socialist People’s Party, “is that we have to make ourselves free of the superpowers and be responsible for our own foreign policy.”

The much-publicized grounding of a Soviet submarine in. Swedish waters in November severely jolted Scandinavians and seemed a set-back for the disarmament movement. “It was astonishing to discover at least one nuclear weapon on board,” commented Marek Thee, editor of the Oslo-based Bulletin of Peace Proposals. “But in the end it may have a constructive consequence if it makes people realize just how close to the edge of nuclear warfare we are, even here in the far north of Europe.”

Belgium: Saying “No” in NATO’s Back Yard

It must be embarrassing. Even Belgium, the host country for the NATO headquarters in Europe, is likely to follow Holland’s example of declining a share of the new NATO missiles. While NATO persists in hoping for agreement from the government, Belgium is among European governments most sensitive to public opinion. The country is an uneasy mix of two peoples and languages put within a common border in the last century when it was established as a buffer state between France and the Netherlands. Since 1945, 32 governments have held office in Brussels. Few have lasted even a year. The most recent election in Belgium closely followed an October protest in which 200,000 assembled to oppose acceptance of 48 Cruise missiles and to call on the Soviets to remove its 58-205 from ‘Eastern Europe. National opinion polls found 66 percent of the people in opposition to Cruise deployment. Whatever government is set up in Brussels, pressure will remain considerable to retain the “no decision” position.

The Belgian campaign has been led by coalitions that include everyone from Catholics to Communists. In the Flemish north, the main coalition is VAKA (the Action Committee Against Nuclear Weapons) while in the French-speaking area protest has been voiced through CNAPD, a coalition representing 25 peace and disarmament groups in this largely Catholic country, Pax Christi has played a major role in bringing disarmament discussion down to the parish level. The Belgian Catholic bishops in October condemned plans for new nuclear weapons and called on the NATO states to reverse their decision as “a unilateral gesture of good will” that could increase the prospects for negotiated disarmament. The government’s refusal to commit itself to accepting the new missiles was praised as “a step forward which could reactivate the process of détente, cooperation, and respect for human rights.”

France: A Small Space Between Right and Left

Having withdrawn from NATO’s Military Command in 1966, France has a certain immunity to Hollanditis. “For us, explains Jesuit priest Christian Mellon of the Mouvement pour une Alternative Nonviolente in Paris, “nuclear weapons have not been a symbol of subservience to the US—rather a proof of French independence. But they are not something the French have thought very much about in recent years. We have suffered a fatalistic acceptance of them.”

The main political parties in France have long supported the force de frappe (literally, strike force)—the French independent nuclear arsenal. On the right are the Gaullists, inventors of the force de frappe, proud of their progeny and showing no sign of anxiety about the dangers of nuclear warfare. On the left, the Socialist government led by President Francois Mitterrand, has expressed its commitment to the French nuclear force and supports the NATO missile decision, though none of the missiles would be placed in France. The French Communist Party, far larger. than its counterparts to the north, has gone so far in demonstrating its nuclear nationalism as to advocate the construction of a seventh nuclear submarine for the French fleet. It is therefore not surprising that, when 50,000 rallied in Paris in October to. protest the nuclear weapons of the US and the USSR, no objections were voiced against France’s own nuclear stockpile.

Yet Christian Mellon believes there is some promise for the development of a disarmament movement in France that would be both non-aligned and committed to nuclear disarmament for France as for other countries. He sees a foundation for such a movement in the many groups which were drawn together in the decade-long struggle opposing expansion of a military base on the Larzac plateau, in the south of France. The Larzac peasants carried out nonviolent resistance to the confiscation of their land which eventually drew as many as 100,000 supporters in festivals of resistance to militarism. Following Mitterrand’s election in 1981, the Larzac struggle achieved its goals. When 3000 people gathered to celebrate the victory in the summer of 1981, they proposed that the movement focus its energies on the elimination of nuclear weapons. They formulated the “Larzac Appeal” which calls for‘ the “formation in France of a large movement against war and nuclear armaments, which can take its place within the European disarmament movement and, with it, protest vigorously against nuclear weapons in both East and West.”

Southern Europe

As the north of Europe becomes less and less hospitable to nuclear weapons and the traditional roles of the superpowers, NATO is doubtless increasingly interested in its prospects in the south. By relying more on bases in the south, NATO could maintain its war-making capability in Europe while opening new possibilities for military action in the Middle East and North Africa.

The victory of the Socialist Party in the recent Greek elections was a major setback for NATO planners. The government of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou is pressing the US for the removal of nuclear weapons and the closure of US military bases in Greece. Malta, a microstate in the midst of the Mediterranean, has already gone the path the Greeks are considering. British and NATO bases there have been withdrawn.

Italy is the only state in southern Europe that has expressed a readiness to serve as a base for the new NATO weapons. It has long belonged to NATO and anticipated little opposition from the residents of Sicily to the stationing of 112 Cruise missiles there. Sicilian resistance, however, is likely to be sustained and fervent, as a Dutch visitor discovered during a visit to the island in November. Already a hundred groups have sprung up determined that Sicily shall never become either a base or a target of nuclear war

In Rome, 300,000 gathered in October in protest of the government’s acquiescence to NATO’s nuclear strategy. More than 500 groups were involved, representing unions, the left, youth movements, church and pacifist groups. A month earlier, 50,000 joined in a peace walk from Perugia to Assisi, the birthplace of St. Francis of Assisi, a model of disarmed and reconciling life.

In Spain, heated debate has resulted from the government’s intention to join NATO. A November poll conducted by El Pais showed 52 percent in opposition to Spanish entrance into NATO, with only 18 percent in support. But the government is pursuing its plans, which it sees as a way to stabilize democracy after it nearly fell to a military coup early in 1981 and as a key element in improving Madrid’s relations with the US. “This is seen as a way for Spain to prove it is truly part of Europe,” commented Arcadi Oliveres in Barcelona, the co-president of Spain’s Pax Christi movement. “But it really is absurd to think membership in NATO can make for a more stable democracy—look what happened in Greece and the chaos in Turkey! All that will really happen is that Spain will be used by the United States.” The government has sought to calm opponents—500,000 of whom demonstrated in Madrid in November—with assurances that the Cruise and Pershing missiles will not be accepted by Spain. Early in December, continuing the NATO protest, 150,000 gathered in Barcelona. In both assemblies, the organizing groups included Pax Christi and the Movement of Conscientious Objectors (MOC). Despite public opinion, Oliveres believes the Madrid government will persist in seeking NATO membership.

Eastern Europe’s Independent Peace Movement

There are increasing indications that a peace movement is taking form in Eastern Europe that is critical of nuclear policies in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Particularly interesting in this regard is the relationship that has begun between East German Lutherans and the Dutch IKV. Early in 1980 a consultation was held involving IKV and the Theological Study Department of g the Federation of East German Evangelical (in US terminology, Lutheran) Churches. The immediate result was a joint appeal for a moratorium on the placement of medium-range missiles on both sides of Europe and a declaration that Christians should in no way participate in fighting nuclear war. The 1980 Pastoral Letter of the Netherlands Reformed Church supporting the unilateral removal of all nuclear arms from Holland was translated and widely circulated. In response, the Theological Study Department proposed a unilateral step that could be taken by the East German government: the abolition within the country of all “dual-capacity” weapons—those with the potential of being adapted to nuclear use.

Five of East Germany’s eight Lutheran synods have recently convened assemblies where speaker after speaker objected to the militarization of East German society and the state’s military education program for children, including arms handling and the portrayal of fellow human beings as enemies. Responding to more than 4,000 letters which church leaders have received from young East Germans who believe their Christian faith precludes even the noncombatant military service now offered, they asked the state to establish civilian alternative service for conscientious objectors. This has yet to occur in any Warsaw Pact country.

“In the West we have more and better of everything,” comments Dorothee Sölle, “better school books, better clothes, and even a better peace movement. But perhaps not more courage. Consider the courage of religious dissent in East Germany. In the Warsaw Pact, it is argued that the Army is itself a peace movement and that it has no aggressive function. It is Supposed to be entirely for self-defense. Now the churches in East Germany are opposing the idea. The government is furious, but the church refuses to let the issue drop.”

Romania’s President Nicolae Ceauseacu is probably more irritating to Moscow than to Washington for his frequent criticism of nuclear weapons in both military alliances. In November, 300,000 Romanians rallied for nuclear disarmament by both blocs, with equal emphasis on US and Soviet responsibility.

In Hungary a Catholic priest, Fr. Lazslo Kovacs, was tried last October by an archdiocesan tribunal in Budapest for the dissemination of “pacifist ideas” among local youth. He has worked closely with Christian base communities which interpret the Gospel along radically pacifist lines—including conscientious objection to military service—and which have come into conflict with the church hierarchy as well as state authorities. The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly, reports a rather unusual sentence by the tribunal: Fr. Kovacs is to spend six months assembling documentation for the canonization of the Blessed Eusebius.

“God In All This”

“Where is God in all this?” an old Jew inquires repeatedly in Elie Weisel’s play, The Trial of God. It is a question worth asking. Those considering the European disarmament campaigns may find it hard to discern God’s presence in all this. While often deeply rooted in the churches, the public face of this work is intensely political. Large egos and rigid ideologies abound. There are those for whom the weapons of one superpower, however devastating, are less disturbing than the similar weapons of another. There is much abrasiveness. Yet the effort is emphatic about the preciousness of life, and is profoundly hope-giving. Hope is a name of God.

As uprooted Americans brought to Holland by our vocations, we have been able to witness at close range what a small community of concerned religious people have gradually built up in one of the world’s smaller countries, what that has come to mean within this country, and how increasingly it has touched, encouraged and given a sharper edge to peace work occurring beyond Dutch borders.

The spread of Hollanditis does not automatically lead to optimism. Even if the smaller states, east and west, achieve regional disarmament, so long as the super-powers retain their huge arsenals, the world still hangs by a thread. If missile sites in Europe are rejected, NATO planners can put their Cruise missiles in the air, on the sea, and under the sea. Many are planned for such deployment in any event.

On the other hand, European nuclear disarmament is no longer a pipe dream. Should it occur, it would be a clear sign that NATO can no longer share in responsibility for the US nuclear build-up, eliminating one of the main US justifications for it. It would also be an immense encouragement to campaigns for disarmament in the US and a stimulus for similar campaigns within the Warsaw Pact. The pressure on the superpowers to disarm would be greatly increased.

Perhaps a self-inflicted Doomsday is not inevitable. Even when confronted with the practical atheism of nuclear weaponry, the possibility of choosing life remains. The people of Europe are showing the world their determination to make that choice.

Note: In December 1987 President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, hugely reducing the nuclear arsenal. Six months later Regan told reporters that he no longer considered the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and described his relationship with Gorbachev as one of friendship. Undoubtedly nuclear disarmament campaigns such as those described in this article played a crucial role in helping warm the political climate without which the treaty would have been unthinkable.

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At the time this article was published, Jim Forest was General Secretary of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, a member of the editorial board of Disarmament Campaigns, and a contributing editor for the US monthly, Sojourners, in which this article also appeared. Peter Herby was then responsible for IFOR’s disarmament program. He holds a Master’s Degree in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford, England

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]]>A modest proposal: wear a Whole Earth photohttp://jimandnancyforest.com/2019/01/a-modest-proposal-wear-a-whole-earth-photo-2/
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 21:32:19 +0000http://jimandnancyforest.com/?p=2619Continue reading "A modest proposal: wear a Whole Earth photo"]]>One of the important events of my life was receiving, while imprisoned for an anti-war protest, an original print of a NASA photograph of the Earth taken on the 16th of July 1969. It arrived shortly after the safe return of the Apollo 11 crew following their successful moon landing. This stunning image immediately became the main decoration of my cell and, 50 years later, is here in our living room. I often carry a laminated print of the photo with me when I have a lecture to give and pass it around, commenting that this small planet is home address of all of us.
It was with me when I spoke in Edinburgh recently. Out of the blue came an idea: I suggested that wearing a badge with a Whole Earth photo on it would be an excellent way to tunnel under ideological and political barriers that so often divide us in this ultra-polarized time — an image without words or slogans, as silent and prayer-inspiring as an icon. It’s not a me-versus-you emblem. It simultaneously challenges both ourselves and others to take greater responsibility for protecting our planet, its environment, its population and generations to come.
I took the idea with me as I travelled on to Glasgow and London and talked about it during a BBC interview. The Glasgow Catholic Worker become the first group to act of the idea, placing an order for a thousand badges. A trial printing of the badge has now been made here in Holland — I just picked up the first batch from our local Copy Center.

the Dutch-made Whole Earth badges

My modest proposal is that others, both organizations and individuals, take up this simple idea and make Whole Earth badges in quantity for wide distribution. Give them away if you can afford to — sell them at cost if you can’t. They’re not costly to manufacture and NASA photos are not under copyright.
I dare to imagine many thousands of people wearing them before the year is far along.
Jim Forest / jhforest@gmail.com
PS Here’s more about the photo I received while in prison plus a selection of quotations from astronauts who have seen the Whole Earth with their own eyes…